IMAGE  EVALUATION 
TEST  TARGET  (MT-3) 


.fi 


,^ 


1.0 


I.I 


1.25 


1^ 


M 

2.0 


1.8 


1.4    IIIIII.6 


VI 


/a 


/a 


7 


">»'^^ 


'«V 


"H.'- 


W- 


W.r 


CIHM/ICMH 

Microfiche 

Series. 


I. 


CIHM/ICMH 
Collection  de 
microfiches. 


vV 


Canadian  Institute  for  Historical  Microreproductions  Institut  Canadian  de  microreproductions  historiques 

1980 


Technical  and  Bibliographic  Notes/Notes  techniques  et  bibliographiques 


The  Institute  has  attemptad  to  obtain  the  best 
original  copy  available  for  filming.  Features  of  this 
copy  which  may  be  bibliographically  unique, 
which  may  alter  any  of  the  images  in  the 
reproduction,  or  which  may  significantly  change 
the  usual  method  of  filming,  are  checked  below. 


n 

D 
D 

n 


Coloured  covers/ 
Couverture  de  couleur 

Covers  damaged/ 
Couverture  endommag6e 

Covers  restored  and/or  laminated/ 
Couverture  restaurde  et/ou  pellicul^e 

Cover  title  missing/ 

Le  titre  de  couverture  manque 


I      I    Coloured  maps/ 


D 


Cartes  g6ographiques  en  couleur 

Coloured  ink  (i.e.  other  than  blue  or  black)/ 
Encre  de  couleur  (i.e.  autre  que  bleue  ou  noire) 


□    Coloured  plates  and/or  illustrations/ 
Planches  et/ou  illustrations  en  couleur 

□    Bound  with  other  material/ 
Reli6  avec  d'autres  documents 


D 


D 


D 


Tight  binding  may  cause  shadows  or  distortion 
along  interior  margin/ 

La  reliure  serr^e  peut  causer  de  I'ombre  ou  de  la 
distortion  le  long  de  la  marge  intdrieure 

Blank  leaves  added  during  restoration  may 
appear  within  the  text.  Whenever  possible,  these 
have  been  omitted  from  filming/ 
II  se  peut  que  certaines  pages  blanches  ajout^es 
lors  d'une  restauration  apparaissent  dans  le  texte, 
mais,  lorsque  cela  6tait  possible,  ces  pages  n'ont 
pas  6X6  filmdes. 

Additional  comments:/ 
Commentaires  suppl6mentaires: 


L'Institut  a  microfilm^  le  meilleur  exemplaire 
qu'il  lui  a  6t6  possible  de  se  procurer.  Les  details 
de  cet  exemplaire  qui  sont  peut-dtre  uniques  du 
point  de  vue  bibliographique,  qui  peuvent  modifier 
une  image  reproduite,  ou  qui  peuvent  exiger  une 
modification  dans  la  mdthode  normale  de  filmage 
sont  indiqu6s  ci-dessous. 


n 


Coloured  pages/ 
Pages  de  couleur 


0    Pages  damaged/ 
Pages  endommagdes 

□    Pages  restored  and/or  laminated/ 
Pages  restaurdes  et/ou  pellicul^es 

I — I    Pages  discoloured,  stained  or  foxed/ 


D 


Pages  ddcolor6es,  tachetdes  ou  piqu6es 

Pages  detached/ 
Pages  d^tachdes 


□    Showthrough/ 
Transparence 

I      I    Quality  of  print  varies/ 


Quality  indgale  de  I'impression 

Includes  supplementary  material/ 
Comprend  du  materiel  supplementaire 

Only  edition  available/ 
Seule  Edition  disponible 


Pages  wholly  or  partially  obscured  by  errata 
slips,  tissues,  etc.,  have  been  refilmed  to 
ensure  the  best  possible  image/ 
Les  pages  totalement  ou  partiellement 
obscurcies  par  un  feuillet  d'errata,  une  pelure, 
etc.,  ont  6t6  film6es  6  nouveau  de  fapon  6 
obtenir  la  meilleure  image  possible. 


a 


This  item  is  filmed  at  the  reduction  ratio  checked  below/ 

Ce  document  est  filmi  au  taux  de  reduction  indiqu6  ci-dessous. 


10X 

14X 

18X 

22X 

26X 

30X 

V 

12X 

16X 

20X 

24X 

28X 

32X 

1 

ils 

lu 

Jifier 

me 

age 


The  copy  filmed  here  has  been  reproduced  thanks 
to  the  generosity  of: 

Library  of  the  Public 
Archives  of  Canada 

The  images  appearing  here  are  the  best  quality 
possible  considering  the  condition  and  legibility 
of  the  original  copy  and  in  keeping  with  the 
filming  contract  specifications. 


L'exemplaire  film6  fut  reproduit  grdce  d  la 
g6n6rosit6  de: 

La  bibliothdque  des  Archives 
publiques  du  Canada 

Les  images  suivantes  ont  6t6  reproduites  avec  le 
plus  grand  soin,  compte  tenu  de  la  condition  et 
de  la  nettetd  de  l'exemplaire  film6,  et  en 
conformity  avec  les  conditions  du  contrat  de 
filmage. 


Original  copies  in  printed  paper  covers  are  filmed 
beginning  with  the  front  cover  and  ending  on 
the  last  page  with  a  printed  or  illustrated  impres- 
sion, or  the  back  cover  when  appropriate.  All 
other  original  copies  are  filmed  beginning  on  the 
first  page  with  a  printed  or  illustrated  impres- 
sion, and  ending  on  the  last  page  with  a  printed 
or  illustrated  impression. 


Les  exemplaires  originaux  dont  la  couverture  en 
papier  est  imprimde  sont  film6s  en  commenpant 
par  le  premier  plat  et  en  terminant  soit  par  la 
dernidre  page  qui  comporte  une  empreinte 
d'impression  ou  d'illustration,  soit  par  le  second 
plat,  selon  le  cas.  Tous  les  autres  exemplaires 
originaux  sont  filmds  en  commenpant  par  la 
premidre  page  qui  comporte  une  empreinte 
d'impression  ou  d'illustration  et  en  terminant  par 
la  dernidre  page  qui  comporte  une  telle 
empreinte. 


The  last  recorded  frame  on  each  microfiche 
shall  contain  the  symbol  — ^>  (meaning  "CON- 
TINUED "),  or  the  symbol  V  (meaning  "END"), 
whichever  applies. 

Maps,  plates,  charts,  etc.,  may  be  filmed  at 
different  reduction  ratios.  Those  too  large  to  be 
entirely  included  in  one  exposure  are  filmed 
beginning  in  the  upper  left  hand  corner,  left  to 
right  and  top  to  bottom,  as  many  frames  as 
required.  The  following  diagrams  illustrate  the 
method: 


Un  des  symboles  suivants  apparaTtra  sur  la 
dernidre  image  de  cheque  microfiche,  selon  le 
cas:  le  symbole  — ►  signifie  "A  SUIVRE  ",  le 
symbole  V  signifie  "FIN". 

Les  cartes,  planches,  tableaux,  btc,  peuvent  dtre 
film^s  d  des  taux  de  reduction  diffdrents. 
Lorsque  le  document  est  trop  grand  pour  dtre 
reproduit  en  un  seul  cliche,  il  est  film^i  d  partir 
de  Tangle  sup6rieur  gauche,  de  gaucfie  d  droite, 
et  de  haut  en  bas,  en  prenant  le  non^bre 
d'images  ndce^saire.  Les  diagrammes  suivants 
illustrent  la  mdthode. 


-rata 
o 


lelure, 
1  d 


□ 


32X 


1  2  3 


1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

m 


NEWFOUNDLAND  AND  THE 

JINGOES 


AJV  APPEAL   TO  ENGLAND'S  HONOR 


KV 


JOHN    FRETWELL 


Boston-,  Mass.:   Gko.  H.  Ellis 

Toronto,  Canada:   Hunthk,  Rose  «&  Co. 

Westmixstkr,  England:   Archihald  Constable  &  Co. 


r 


Copyright  1895  by  John  FrbtwelL. 

CorYKIGHTKD   IN    ENGLAND    AND    THE   UnITHD    StATES 

Right  ok  Translation  and  Kepublication  Reserved 


f 


H.  BLLI8,  mlNTlll,  141    FRANKLll.    8T»EiT,  •08T0N. 


"  To  be  taken  into  the  American  Union  is  to  be  adopted  into  a  part- 
nership. To  l)elong  as  a  Crown  Colony  to  ^he  Ikitish  Empire,  as  things 
stand,  is  no  partnership  at  all. 

"  It  is  to  belong  to  a  power  which  sacrifices,  as  it  has  always  sacri- 
ficed, the  interest  of  its  dependencies  to  its  own.  The  blood  runs  freely 
through  every  vein  and  artery  of  the  American  body  corporate.  Every 
single  citizen  feels  his  share  in  the  life  of  his  nation.  Clreat  Britain 
leaves  her  Colonies  to  take  care  of  themselves,  refuses  what  they  ask, 
and  forces  (3n  them  what  they  had  rather  be  without. 

'*  If  I  were  a  West  Indian,  I  should  feel  that  under  the  stars  and 
stripes  I  should  be  safer  than  I  was  at  present  from  political  experi- 
menting. I  should  have  a  market  in  which  to  sell  my  produce  where  I 
should  be  treated  as  a  friend.  I  should  have  a  power  behind  me  and 
protecting  me,  and  I  should  have  a  future  to  which  I  could  look  for- 
ward with  confidence.  America  would  restore  me  to  hope  and  life: 
Great  liritain  allows  me  to  sink,  contenting  herself  with  advising  me  to 
1)6  patient.  Why  should  I  continue  loyal  when  my  loyalty  was  so  con- 
temptuously valued?"  —  James  Anthony  Froude  (from  "The  Eng- 
lish in  the  West  Indies,"  Nov.  15,  1887). 


"  In  the  United  States  is  Canada's  natural  market  for  buying  as  well 
as  for  selling,  the  market  which  her  productions  are  always  struggling 
to  enter  through  every  opening  in  the  tariff  wall,  for  exclusion  from 
which  no  distant  market  either  in  England  or  elsewhere  can  compensate 
lier,  the  want  of  which  brings  on  her  commercial  atrophy,  and  drives 
the  flower  of  her  youth  by  thousands  and  Wl$fr  of  thousands  over  the 
line.  ^^ 

"The  Canadian  \orth-west  remains  unpeopled  while  the  neighboring 
States  of  the  Union  are  peopled,  because  it  is  cut  off  from  the  con- 
tinent to  which  it  belongs  by  a  fiscal  and  political  line." — -Goldwin 
Smith,  D.C.L.,  in  "Questions  of  the  Day,"  page  159  (Macmillan  &. 
Co.,  London,  1893). 


PREFACE. 


Tt  would  be  evidence  of  gross  ignorance,  or  something 
worse,  to  pretend  that  the  United  States,  under  like  condi- 
tions, would  have  treated  the  Newfoundlanders  better  than 
England  has  done.  It  would  be  especially  so  after  the 
humiliating  spectacle  presented  to  the  world  by  our  Demo- 
cratic majorities  last  year  in  Congress  and  in  the  State 
and  city  of  New  York. 

With  material  resources  superior  to  thosr  of  any  other 
country  in  the  world,  we  ar^^  obliged  co  appeal  to  the 
European    money-lender    for  gold. 

P>en  the  chosen  head  of  our  Tory  Democracy  tells 
Congress  that  we  must  sacrifice  $16,000,000  to  obtain 
gold  on  the  terms  offered  by  his  Secretary  of  the  Treas- 
ury. 

P^ngland's  past  blunders  have  been  singularly  favorable 
to  American  interests,  when  real  statesmen  were  at  the 
helm  in  Washington.  Any  strategist  can  see  that,  if 
Lord  Palmerston,  instead  of  bullying  weak  Greece  and 
China,  had  done  justice  to  Newfoundland,  his  govern- 
ment might  have  acquired  so  strong  a  position  in  Amer- 
ica as  to  seriously  imperil  the  preservation  of  the  Union 
some  thirty  years  ago.  That  he  failed  to  do  his  duty  was 
as  fortunate  for  the  United  States  as  it  was  unfortunate 
for    Newfoundland.     To-day,  but   for    the  emasculating  in- 


0  PREFACE 

fluence  of  our  Tory  Democracy,  England's  blunders  in 
the  same  island  would  be  profitable  to  the  United  States. 

Even  for  our  small  and  expensive  navy  v;e  cannot  find 
sufficient  able  seamen  among  our  citizens ;  and  the  starving 
fishermen  of  Newfoundland  are  just  the  men  we  need.  But 
there  is  no  money  in  the  national  treasury  to  pay  them ; 
while  our  ridiculous  immigration  and  suffrage  laws  exclude 
the  men  we  need,  and  enable  the  scum  of  Europe  to  in- 
fluence our  legislation. 

I  trust  this  tract  may  suggest  to  some  Englishmen  the 
best  way  to  prevent  a  repetition  of  the  present  distress, 
and  so  show  the  world  that,  after  all,  loyalty  is  sometimes 
appreciated  in  imperial  circles.  The  old  project  of  a  rapid 
line  of  steamers  from  Bay  St.  George  to  Chaleurs  Bay, 
giving  England  communication  via  Newfoundland  with 
Montreal  in  less  than  five  days,  has  been  revived ;  but  the 
route  is  closed  by  winter  ice,  and  too  far  north  for  the 
United  States. 

A  belter  route,  open  all  the  year  round,  is  that  from  Port 
aux  Basques  to  Neil's  Cove,  a  distance  of  only  fifty-two 
miles  by  sea  against  two  hundred  and  fifty  miles  from  Bay 
St.  George  to  Paspebiac  or  Shippegan ;  and  still  better  is  the 
route  via  Port  aux  Basques  and  Louisbourg,  which  will  soon 
be  connected  with  the  American  lines,  with  a  single  break 
of  three  miles  at  the  Gut  of  Canso  Ferry.  With  all  its 
faults,  British  rule  has  one  advantage  over  that  of  all  other 
colonial  powers :  it  gives  the  foreigner,  no  matter  what  his 
faith  or  nation,  exactly  the  same  commercial  rights  as  the 
British  subject ;  and  so,  although  Newfoundland  will  lose  by 
the  exclusion  of  its  fish  from  our  protected  markets,  and  by 
the  diplomatic   inability  of  the  British  government   to  pro- 


TREFACE 


tect  it  from  the  effects  of  French  bounties  and  treaty  rights, 
the  enlightened  selfishness  of  the  Xew  Englander  will  find 
that  "  there  is  money  for  him  *'  in  the  development  of  those 
resources  which  have  been  so  singularly  neglected  by  the 
British  capitalists  who  invest  their  money  in  the  most  rotten 
'  chemes  that  Yankee  ingenuity  can  invent. 

J.  1'. 

Fed    II,  1895. 


AUTHORITIES. 


In  the  following  pages  1  have  drawn  largely  on  the  well-known  works 
of  llatton  and  Harvey,  Bonnycastle,  I'edley,  Bishop  llowley.  and  Spear- 
man's article  in  the  Westminster  Keview  for  1S92,  concerning  Newfound- 
land; and,  on  the  general  question,  on  Froude's  "  ICngland  to  the  Defeat 
of  the  Spanish  Armada,"  Lecky's  "History  of  England  in  the  Eighteenth 
Century,"  ISlaine's  "Twenty  Years  of  Congress,"  Han;  I's  Debates, 
"The  Annual  Re^.ater,''  McCarthy's  "  History  of  our  own  Times,"  and 
the  Blue  Books  of  the  British  government. 

To  the  tourist  who  proposes  to  visit  the  island  I  can  recommend 
Rev.  Moses  Harvey's  "  Newfoundland  in  1894,"  published  in  St.  John's, 
as  the  best  guide  to  the  island.  Mr.  Harvey  has  also  written  an  e.xcel- 
lent  article  on  the  island  for  Baedeker's  "Canada."  For  the  hunter, 
painter,  photographer,  angler,  yachtsman,  or  geologist,  there  is  not  a 
more  attractive  excursion,  for  from  one  to  three  months,  along  the 
whole  American  coast  than  that  through  and  round  Newfoundland. 

J.  F. 


NEWFOUNDLAND  AND  THE  JINGOES. 


BY   JOHN   FRETWELL. 


The  most  prominent  and  able  intellectual  representative 
of  the  money  power  in  the  world,  the  London  Imes,  writes 
of  Newfoundland  :  — 

"  Even  if  we  were  disposed  to  do  so,  we  cannot  in  our 
position  as  a  naval  power  view  with  indifference  the  disaster 
to,  and  possibly  the  ruin  of,  a  colony  we  may  sometimes  re- 
gard as  amongst  the  most  valuable  of  our  naval  stations. 
Neither  can  we  view  the  position  without  consideration  for 
the  wide-spread  suffering  that  an  absolute  refusal  to  grant 
assistance  would  entail.  It  is  probable  that  a  cheaper  sys- 
tem of  administration  would  retrieve  the  position  without 
casting  an  overwhelmingly  heavy  burden  upon  the  imperial 
tax-payers.  If  we  interpret  public  feeling  aright,  it  will  be 
in  favor  of  giving  the  colony  the  help  that  may  be  found 
essential;  but,  if  the  assistance  required  takes  a'lything  like 
the  radical  proportion  that  at  present  seer  is  necessary,  it 
can  only  be  granted  at  a  p  ce, —  the  surrender  of  the  Con- 
stitution and  the  return  of  Newfoundland  to  the  condition  of 
a  crown  colony." 

While  we  may  safely  concede  to  the  editors  of  the  Times 
as  much  "  consideration  for  wide-spread  suffering  "  as  to  a 
Jay  Gould  or  a  Napoleon,  the  above-quoted  words  are  sig- 
nificant, because  they  show  that  what  the  ruling  powers  in 
England  would  never  concede  to  charity  or  justice  they  will 
give  to  self-interest,  now  that  the  Ihncs  has  discovered 
"there  is  money  in  it." 

But  to  us  Americans  the  words  have  their  lesson  also. 
Newfoundland  not  only  belongs  to  our  Continental  system, 


lO 


THE  CRADLE  OF  ENGLAND  S  NAVY 


but  it  can  never  be  really  prosperous  until  it  becomes  a 
State  in  our  Union.  What  it  is  to-day,  New  England  might 
have  been,  had  it  not  been  delivered  by  the  Continental 
forces,  and  by  the  French  navy,  from  the  rule  of  British 
Tories.  And,  as  a  member  of  our  Union,  this  island,  five 
times  the  size  of  Massachusetts,  might  not  only  be  as  pros- 
perous as  Rhode  Island  or  Connecticut,  but  also  the  chief 
training  ground  for  our  future  navy,  which,  checked  by  the 
piracies  of  the  British-built  "  Alabama,"  will  become  in  the 
near  future  an  indispensable  necessity  of  our  national  ex- 
istence. 

Since  the  English  people  seem  to  have  taken  to  heart,  far 
more  than  his  own  countrymen  have  done,  the  lesson  taught 
by  our  Captain  Mahan  in  his  ''  Influence  of  the  Sea-power 
in  History,"  it  is  well  that  we  should  consider  the  past 
history  of  England's  relations  to  that  first-born  colony 
which  she  has  so  infamously  sacrificed,  and  for  whose  mis- 
fortunes she  alone  is  responsible. 

The  lesson  that  we  may  learn  from  that  history  is  quite 
as  much  needed  by  the  American  as  by  the  Briton.  Ed- 
mund R.  Spearman,  writing  in  the  Westminster  Review  (Vol. 
i37»  page  403*  1892),  says  : — 

"  No  English  Homer  has  yet  risen  to  tell  the  tale  of  New- 
foundland, shrouded  in  mystery  and  romance,  the  daring 
invasion  and  vicissitudes  of  those  exhaustless  fisheries, 
the  battle  of  life  in  that  seething  cauldron  of  the  North 
Atlantic,  where  the  swelling  billows  never  rest,  and  the  hur- 
ricane only  slumbers  to  bring  forth  the  worse  dangers  of 
the  fog-bank  and  the  iceberg.  Fierce  as  has  been  during 
the  four  centuries  the  fight  for  the  fisheries  by  European 
rivals,  their  petty  racial  quarrels  sink  into  insignificance 
before  the  general  struggle  for  the  harvest.  The  Atlantic 
roar  hides  all  minor  pipings.  The  breed  of  fisher-folk  from 
these  deep-sea  voyagings  consist  of  the  toughest  specimens 
of  human  endurance.  All  other  dangers  which  lure  men  to 
venture  everything  for  excitement  or  for  fortune,  the  torrid 


I 


QUEEN    ELIZABETH  S    FAULTS 


I  £ 


heat  or  arctic  cold,  the  battle  against  man  or  beast,  the 
desert  or  the  jungle,  all  land  adventures  are  as  nothing  com- 
pared to  the  daring  of  the  hourly  existence  of  the  heroic 
souls  whose  lives  are  cast  upon  the  banks  of  Newfoundland. 
The  fishermen  may  seem  wild  and  reckless,  rough  and  illit- 
erate ;  but  supreme  danger  and  superlative  sacrifice  breed 
noble  qualities,  and  beneath  the  rough  exterior  of  the  fisher- 
man you  will  never  fail  to  find  a  man,  and  no  cheap  imita- 
tion of  the  genuine  article.  None  but  a  man  can  face  for  a 
second  time  the  frown  of  the  North  Atlantic,  that  exhibition 
of  mighty,  all-consuming  power,  beside  the  sober  reality  of 
which  all  the  ecstasies  of  poets  and  painters  are  puny 
failures.  Among  these  heroes  of  the  sea  England's  children 
have  always  been  foremost.  We  should  expect  England  to 
be  especially  proud  of  such  an  offspring,  familiivr  with  their 
struggles,  and  ever  heedful  of  their  welfare,  lending  an  ear 
to  their  claims  or  complaints  above  all  others.  Strange  to 
say,  it  has  always  been  the  exact  reverse." 

Though  discovered  by  John  and  Sebastian  Cabot  in  1494, 
"the  twenty-fourth  of  June  at  five  o'clock  in  the  morning,"  it 
was  not  until  ninety  years  later  that  the  island  was  formally 
organized  as  an  English  colony  (Aug.  5,  1582,  by  Sir  Hum- 
phrey Gilbert). 

The  persecutions  of  Bloody  Mary  and  the  massacre  of 
St.  Bartholomew  had  roused  the  indignation  of  English- 
men to  the  highest  pitch.  They  were  ready  for  any  risk  in 
open  war  against  France  and  Spain,  but  ()ueen  Elizabeth 
was  always  trying  to  shirk  responsibility  ;  and  so  the  sea- 
captains  who  would  avenge  the  wrongs  done  to  the  Protes- 
tants were  obliged  to  run  the  risk  of  being  condemned  as 
pirates. 

One  of  them  wrote  to  Queen  Elizabeth,  Nov.  6,  1577,  of- 
fering to  fit  out  ships,  well  armed,  for  the  Banks  of  New- 
foundland, where  some  twenty-five  thousand  fishermen  went 
out  from  France,  Spain,  and  Portugal  every  summer  to 
catch  the  food  of  their  Catholic  fast  days.     He  proposed  to 


i  1 1 


'> 


12 


QUEEN    ELIZABETH  S    FAULTS 


It  .: 


treat  these  fishermen  as  the  Huguenots  of  France  had  been 
treated, —  to  bring  away  the  best  of  their  ships,  and  to  burn 
the  rest.  Nine  days  after  the  date  of  this  letter  Francis 
Drake  sailed  from  Plymouth,  commanding  a  fleet  of  five 
ships,  equipped  by  a  company  of  private  adventurers,  of 
whom  Queen  Elizabeth  was  the  largest  shareholder.  Fort- 
unately, they  never  committed  the  horrible  crime  suggested 
in  that  letter.  In  those  five  ships,  says  Froude,  lay  the 
germ  of  Great  JJritain's  ocean  empire. 

In  1585  Sir  John  Hawkins,  who  had  meanwhile  annexed 
Newfoundland  to  the  English  Dominion,  proposed  again  to 
take  a  fleet  to  the  Fishing  Banks,  whither  half  the  sailors  of 
Spain  and  Portugal  went  annually  to  fish  for  cod. 

He  would  destroy  them  all  at  one  fell  swoop,  cripple  the 
Spanish  marine  for  years,  and  leave  the  galleons  to  rot  in 
the  harbors  for  want  of  sailors  to  man  them. 

Had  this  been  done,  Philip  of  Spain  would  never  have 
been  able  to  threaten  England  with  his  "  Invincible  Ar- 
mada.'' But  the  brave  Englishmen  of  those  days  had  to 
deal  V "ith  a  treacherous  queen.  The  Hollanders  who  had 
engaged  in  a  desperate  struggle  that  they  might  have  done 
with  lies,  and  serve  God  with  honesty  and  sincerity,  were 
willing  and  eager  to  be  annexed  to  England,  and  in  union 
with  her  would  have  formed  so  strong  a  power  as  to  be  able 
to  resist  any  Continental  league  against  them. 

But  Elizabeth  cared  more  for  herself  than  for  her  country 
and  her  cause,  and  thus  made  warlike  measures  necessary 
which  an  Oliver  Cromwell  w^Mld  have  avoided. 

Her  duplicity  may  have  provoked  those  republican  ideas 
that  were  brought  by  Brewster  and  the  other  Pilgrim 
Fathers  to  America.  Brewster  was  the  friend  and  compan- 
ion of  Davison,  Queen  Elizabeth's  Secretary  of  State,  who 
was  sent  on  an  embassy  to  the  Netherlands  by  her ;  and  the 
contrast  between  these  brave  citizens  and  the  treachery  of 
the  "good  Queen  Bess"  must  have  given  him  a  profound 
sense  of  the  injury  done  to  a  great  nation  by  the  vices  and 
follies  of  royalty. 


THE  SETTLEMENT  OF  CALVERT 


13 


The  infamous  manner  in  whi-^h  the  queen  afterwards 
used  her  faithful  secretar} ,  Davison,  as  her  scapegoat,  and 
the  sycophancy  of  Sandys,  Archbishop  of  York,  at  Davi- 
son's mock  trial,  were  strong  arguments  both  against  royalty 
and  prelacy. 

Under  the  cowardly,  childish,  and  pedantic  king  who  suc- 
ceeded Elizabeth,  Newfoundland  was  the  bone  of  contention 
between  the  factions  at  his  court,  between  Catholics  and 
Protestants,  and  men  who  were  neither,  and  men  who  were 
both. 

Among  the  latter  was  the  gallant  Yorkshireman,  Sir 
George  Calvert,  who  was  Secretary  of  State  to  James,  but 
was  compelled  to  resign  his  office  in  1624,  because  he  be- 
came a  Catholic. 

The  British  and  Irish  Catholics  who  came  over  seem  to 
have  been  the  men  who  came  out  to  Newfoundland  v.ith  the 
most  honest  intent  of  any, —  to  better  themselves  without 
injury  to  others,  and  to  seek  there  "freedom  to  worship 
God  "  at  a  time  when  that  freedom  was  denied  in  England, 
both  to  the  Catholic  and  the  Puritan.  In  1620  Calvert  had 
bought  a  patent  conveying  to  him  the  lordship  of  all  the 
south-eastern  peninsula,  which  he  called  Avalon,  the  ancient 
name  of  Glastonbury  in  England, 

He  proposed  to  found  there  an  asylum  for  the  persecuted 
Catholics ;  and  at  a  little  harbor  on  the  eastern  shore,  just 
south  of  Cape  Broyle,  which  he  called  Verulam,  a  name 
since  corrupted  to  Ferryland,  he  built  a  noble  mansion,  and 
spent  altogether  some  $150,000,  a  much  larger  sum  in  those 
days  than  it  seems  now.  But  the  site  was  ill  chosen ;  and 
the  imbecility  of  King  James  encouraged  the  French  to  at- 
tack the  colony,  so  that  at  last  Calvert  wrote  to  Burleigh, 
''  I  came  here  to  plant  and  set  and  sow,  but  have  had  to 
fall  to  fighting  Frenchmen."  He  went  home,  and  in  the 
last  year  of  his  life  he  obtained  a  grant  of  land,  which  is  now 
occupied  by  the  States  of  J^elaware  and  Maryland ;  and  to 
its  chief  city  his  son  gave  the  name  of  the  wild  Irish  head- 


14 


CHARLES    THE    LIBERTINE 


land  and  fishing  village,  whence  he  took  his  own  name  of 
Lord  Baltimore  in  the  Irish  peerage. 

After  Calvert's  departure,  the  Lord  Lieutenant  of  Ire- 
land sent  out  a  number  of  settlers;  and  in  1638  Sir  David 
Kirke,  one  of  the  bravest  of  England's  sea-captains,  who 
had  taken  Quebec,  received  from  Charles  I.  a  grant  of  all 
Newfoundland,  and  settled  at  Verulam,  or  Ferryland,  the 
place  founded  by  Calvert.  Under  Kirke  the  colony  pros- 
pered; but,  as  he  took  the  part  of  Charles  in  the  civil  war, 
his  possessions  were  confiscated  by  the  victorious  Common- 
wealth. 

At  that  time  there  were  nearly  two  thousand  settlers 
along  the  eastern  shore  of  Avalon  ;  and  the  great  Protector, 
Oliver  Cromwell,  protected  the  rights  of  the  Newfoundland 
settlers  as  he  did  those  of  the  Waldensians, 

After  his  death  came  what  Mr.  Spearman  calls  the 
"  blots  in  the  English  history  known  as  the  reigns  of 
Charles  II.  and  his  deposed  brother." 

Mr.  Spearman  continues,  "  Frenchmen  must  understand 
that  no  Englishman  will  for  a  moment  accept  as  a  prece- 
dent anything  in  those  two  reigns  affecting  the  relations  of 
France  and  of  England." 

But  here  Mr.  Spearman  counts  without  his  host.  He 
should  recollect  that  the  British  government  has,  since  the 
death  of  Charles  II.,  paid  an  annual  pension  to  the  Dukes 
of  Richmond  simply  because  they  were  descended  from  the 
Frenchwoman,  Louise  de  la  Querouaille,  whose  influence  in- 
duced Charles  II.  to  betray  English  interests  to  France, 
and  that  but  the  other  day  the  Salisbury  government  recog- 
nized that  precedent  by  paying  the  Duke  of  Richmond  a 
very  large  sum  of  money  to  buy  off  this  infamous  claiuL 
So  long  as  the  names  of  the  Dukes  of  Richmond  and 
Saint  Alban's  (both  descendants  of  C'harles  II.'s  mis- 
tresses) remain  on  the  roll  of  the  British  Peerage,  the 
Frenchman  will  have  a  right  to  laugh  at  Mr.  Spearman's 
claim  ;  for  we  cannot  ignore  a  precedent  in   our  intercourse 


SETTLEMENTS    OF    FRANCE 


with  foreigners,  so  long  as  we  act  upon  it  in  our  domestic 
affairs. 

Scarcely  was  Charles  the  Libertine  seated  on  the  throne 
of  England,  when  the  Frenchmen,  in  1660,  settled  on  the 
southern  shore  of  Newfoundland,  at  a  place  which  thev 
called  La  Plaisance  (now  known  as  Placentia). 

They  were  certainly  either  wiser  or  more  fortunate  in 
their  choice  of  a  location  than  the  English  ;  for,  while  St. 
John's  and  Ferryland,  on  the  straight  shore  of  Avalon,  are 
exposed  to  the  wildest  gales  of  the  Atlantic,  and  shut  out  bv 
the  arctic  ice  from  all  communication  with  the  ocean  for  a 
part  of  the  winter,  Placentia  is  a  protected  harbor,  open  all 
the  year  round,  and  having  a  sheltered  waterway  navigable 
for  the  largest  ships  to  the  northernmost  and  narrowest 
part  of  the  Isthmus  of  Avalon. 

We  must  believe  that  the  French  would  have  manajred 
Newfoundland  better  than  the  English  if  they  had  kept  the 
island ;  for  the  men  who  cut  the  Isthmus  of  Suez  would 
surely  long  ago  have  made  a  passage,  three  miles  long,  by 
which  the  ships  of  Trinity  Bay  might  have  found  their  way 
at  the  close  of  autumn  to  the  safe  winter  harbors  of  the 
southern  coast. 

All  along  the  southern  shore  the  names  on  the  map  tell 
us  of  French  occupation. 

Port  aux  Basques,  Harbor  Breton.  Rencontre  Bay  (called 
by  the  English  Round  Counter),  Cape  La  Hune,  Bay 
d'Espoir,  are  but  a  few  of  them. 

The  name  which  the  English  have  given  to  this  last 
is  strangely  characteristic.  The  Bay  of  Hope  (Baie  d'Es- 
poir) of  the  French  has  been  changed  into  the  Bay  of  I)c 
spair  of  the  English.  It  was  really  a  Bay  of  Hope  to  the 
French  ;  for  from  the  head  of  one  of  its  fiords,  deep  enough 
for  the  largest  of  our  modern  ships,  an  Indian  trail  goes 
northwards  in  less  than  100  miles  to  the  fertile  valley  of 
the  Exploits  River.  Can  we  suppose  that  the  French  en- 
gineers   would    have    allowed    200  vears  to  elapse   without 


ii 


i6 


ENGLISH    OPPRESSION 


Ml 


building  a  road  along  th" :  trail  ?  And  yet  not  a  single  road 
was  built  by  the  English  conquerors  before  the  year  1825; 
and  even  to-day,  to  reach  the  point  where  the  Indian  trail 
crosses  the  Exploits,  we  must  travel  260  miles  by  rail  from 
Placentia  or  St.  John's  instead  of  100  from  Bay  d'Espoir, 
simply  because  the  English  holders  of  property  in  St. 
John's,  like  dogs  in  the  manger,  will  not  permit  any  improve- 
ment in  the  country,  unless  it  can  be  made  tributary  to 
their  special  interests. 

That  the  English  were  worse  enemies  of  Newfoundland 
than  the  French,  even  in  King  Charles's  time,  may  be  seen 
from  the  advice  given  by  Sir  Josiah  Child,  the  chairman  of 
that  great  monopoly,  the  East  India  Company,  that  the 
island  "  was  to  have  no  government,  nor  inhabitants  per- 
mitted to  reside  at  Newfoundland,  nor  any  passengers  or 
private  boat-keepers  permitted  to  fish  at  Newfoundland." 

The  Lords  of  the  Committee  for  Trade  and  Plantations 
adopted  the  suggestion  of  Sir  Josiah;  and  in  1676,  just  a 
century  before  the  American  Declaration  of  Independence, 
the  west  country  adventurers  began  to  drive  away  the  resi- 
dent inhabitants,  and  to  take  possession  of  their  houses  and 
fishing  stages,  and  did  so  much  damage  in  three  weeks  that 
Thomas  Oxford  declared  1,500  men  could  not  make  it  good. 

We  should  be  unjust  if  we  were  to  regard  this  infamous 
dishonesty  as  simply  an  accident  of  the  Restoration  time. 
Many  of  my  American  readers  have  doubtless  heard  of  an 
island  called  Ireland,  which  is  much  nearer  to  England 
than  Newfoundland.  Lecky  tells  us  how  the  English 
land-owners,  always  foremost  in  selfishness,  procured  the 
enactment  of  laws,  in  1665  and  1680,  absolutely  prohibiting 
the  importation  into  England  from  Ireland  of  all  cattle, 
sheep,  and  swine,  of  beef,  pork,  bacon,  and  mutton,  and 
even  of  butter  and  cheese,  with  the  natural  result  that  the 
French  were  enabled  to  procure  these  provisions  at  lower 
prices,  and  their  work  of  settling  their  sugar  plantations 
was  much  facilitated  thereby. 


INJUSTICE    TO    IRELAND 


17 


In  the  Navigation  Act  of  1663  Ireland  was  deprived  of 
all  the  advantages  accorded  to  English  ones,  and  thus  lost 
her  colonial  trade ;  and,  after  the  Revolution,  the  commer- 
cial influence,  which  then  became  supreme  in  the  councils 
of  England,  was  almost  as  hostile  to  Ireland  as  that  of  the 
Tory  landlords.  A  Parliament  was  summoned  in  Dublin, 
in  1698,  for  the  express  purpose  of  destroying  Irish  indus- 
try ;  and  a  year  later  the  Irish  were  prohibited  from  export- 
ing their  manufactured  wool  to  any  other  country  whatever. 
Prohibitive  duties  were  imposed  on  Irish  sail-cloth  imported 
into  P^ngland.  Irish  checked,  striped,  and  dyed  linens  were 
absolutely  excluded  from  the  colonies,  and  burdened  with 
a  duty  of  30  per  cent,  if  imported  into  England.  Ireland 
was  not  allowed  to  participate  in  the  bounties  granted 
^or  the  exportation  of  these  descriptions  of  linen  from 
Great  Britain  to  foreign  countries.  In  1698  two  petitions, 
from  Folkestone  and  Aldborough,  were  presented  to  Par- 
liament, complaining  of  the  injury  done  to  the  fishermen 
of  those  towns  "by  the  Irish  catching  herrings  at  Water- 
ford  and  Wexford,  and  sending  them  to  the  Straits,  and 
thereby  forestalling  and  ruining  petitioners'  markets " ; 
and  there  was  even  a  party  in  England  who  desired  to 
prohibit  all  fisheries  on  the  Irish  shore  except  by  boats 
built  and  manned  bv  Englishmen. 

Not  only  were  the  Irish  prevented  from  earning  money, 
but  they  were  forced  to  pay  large  sums  to  the  mistresses 
of  English  kings.  Lecky  tells  us  that  the  Duke  of  Saint 
Alban's,  the  bastard  son  of  Charles  II.,  enjoyed  an  Irish 
pension  of  ;^8oo  a  year.  Catherine  Sedley,  the  mistress 
of  James  II.,  had  another  of  ^5,000  a  year.  William  III. 
bestowed  a  considerable  Irish  estate  on  his  mistress,  Eliza- 
beth Villiers.  The  Duchess  of  Kendall  and  the  Countess 
of  Darlington,  two  mistresses  of  the  German  Protestant 
George  I,,  had  Irish  pensions  of  the  united  value  of  ;^5,ooo. 
Lady  Walsingham,  daughter  of  the  first-named  of  these 
mistresses,    had    an    Irish    pension    of  ;£,"i,5oo;    and    Lady 


i8 


RELICIOUS    PERSECUTION 


'1' 


'!'■ 


Howe,  daughter  of  the  second,  had  a  pension  of  ;^5oo. 
Madame  de  Walmoden,  mistress  of  the  German  Protestant 
King  George  II.,  had  an  Irish  pension  of  ^3,000.  Thia 
king's  sister,  the  queen  dowager  01  Prussia,  Count  Berns- 
dorff,  a  prominent  German  politician,  and  a  number  of 
other  German  names  may  be  found  on  the  Irish  pension 
Ust. 

Lecky's  description  of  the  Protestant  Church  of  Ireland 
is  just  as  revolting.  Archbishop  Bolton  wrote,  "  A  true 
Irish  bishop  [meaning  bishops  of  English  birth  and  of  the 
Protestant  Church]  has  nothing  more  to  do  than  to  eat, 
drink,  grow  fat  and  rich,  and  die." 

The  English  primate  of  Ireland  ordained  and  placed  in 
an  Irish  living  a  Hampshire  deer-stealer,  who  had  only 
saved  himself  from  the  gallows  by  turning  informer  against 
his  comrades.  Archbishop  King  wrote  to  Addison,  "  You 
make  nothing  in  England  of  ordering  us  to  provide  for 
such  and  such  a  man  ^200  per  annum,  and,  when  he  has 
it,  by  favor  of  the  government,  he  thinks  he  may  be  excused 
attendance ;  but  you  do  not  consider  that  such  a  disposition 
takes  up,  perhaps,  a  tenth  part  of  the  diocese,  and  turns 
off  the  cure  of  ten  parishes  to  one  curate." 

PYom  the  very  highest  appointment  to  the  lowest,  in 
secular  and  sacred  things,  all  departments  of  administra- 
tion in  Ireland  were  given  over  as  a  prey  to  rapacious 
jobbers.  Charles  Lucas,  M.P.  for  Dublin,  wrote  in  1761 
to  the  Lord  Lieutenant  of  Ireland,  "  Your  excellency  will 
often  find  the  most  infamous  of  men,  the  very  outcasts  of 
Britain,  put  into  the  highest  employments  or  loaded  with 
exorbitant  pensions ;  while  all  that  ministered  and  gave 
sanction  to  the  most  shameful  and  destructive  measures 
of  such  viceroys  never  failed  of  an  ample  share  in  the 
spoils  of  a  plundered  people," 

Arthur  Young,  in  1779,  estimated  the  rents  of  absentee 
landlords  alone  at  ;^732,ooo;  and  Hutchinson,  in  the  same 
year,  stated  that  the  sums  remitted  from   Ireland  to  Great 


I'EACE    OF    UTRECHT 


19 


Britain  for  rents,  interest  of  money,  pensions,  salaries,  and 
profit  of  offices  amounted,  on  the  lowest  computation  (from 
1668  to  1773),  to  ;^i, 1 10,000  yearly. 

If,  in  treating  of  Newfoundland,  I  have  made  many  ex- 
tracts from  Mr.  Lecky's  references  to  Ireland,  it  is  in  order 
that  I  may  show  Mr.  Spearman  the  danger  of  laying  too 
much  stress  on  the  French  claims  as  the  cause  of  the 
present  distress  in   England's  oldest  colony. 

PYance  had  no  claims  in  Ireland,  and  yet  the  conduct  of 
the  British  government  and  the  British  tradesman  to  that 
unfortunate  island  is  one  of  the  blackest  infamies  of  the 
eighteenth  century. 

Mr.  Lecky  says  in  Chapter  V.,  page  ir,  of  his  history: 
"  To  a  sagacious  observer  of  colonial  politics  tv/o  facts  were 
becoming  evident.  The  one  was  that  the  deliberate  and 
malignant  selfishness  of  English  commercial  legislation  was 
digging  a  chasm  between  the  mother  country  and  the  colo- 
nies which  must  inevitably,  when  the  latter  had  become  suf- 
ficiently strong,  lead  to  separation.  The  other  was  that  the 
presence  of  the  French  in  Canada  was  an  essential  condition 
of  the  maintenance  of  the  British  empire  in  America." 

If  Mr,  Lecky  had  studied  Newfoundland's  history,  he 
might  have  added  a  third  fact;  namely,  that  the  French 
claims  in  Newfoundland  have  been  for  the  Jingoes  of  the 
last  half-century  a  convenient  means  of  excuse  for  shirking 
their  own  responsibility  to  the  unfortunate  island,  and  for 
covering  up  the  malignant  selfishness  of  those  tradesmen 
in  Canada  and  England  to  whose  private  interests  the 
island  has  been  sacrificed  by  the  government. 

It  is  interesting  to  observe  how,  at  the  time  of  the  Peace 
of  Utrecht,  on  Article  XIII.  of  which  the  modern  claims  of 
France  are  based,  the  conditions  were  similar  to  those  of 
Tory  intrigue  to-day. 

King  Louis  of  France,  encouraged  by  the  momentary  su- 
premacy of  the  Tories  in  England,  had  insulted  the  English 
people  by  recognizing  the  Pretender  as  King  of  England. 


Pi* 


20 


TORY    INTRI(;UES 


The  popular  indignation  roused  by  tiiis  insult  enabled 
King  William,  by  dissolving  Parliament,  to  overthrow  the 
Tory  power,  and  obtain  a  large  majority  pledged  to  war 
with  France.  The  Whigs  carried  this  war  to  a  victorious 
conclusion  ;  but,  most  unfortunately  for  both  England  and 
its  colonies,  Abigail  Masham,  by  her  influence  over  the 
queen,  secured  the  overthrow  of  the  Whigs.  And  her  cousin 
Harley,  a  Tory,  became  Chancellor  of  the  Exchequer,  thus 
permitting  the  Tories  to  reap  the  fruits  of  W^hig  victories. 
In  reference  to  the  conclusion  of  the  peace  with  France 
Lecky  says,  "  The  tortuous  proceedings  that  terminated  in 
the  Peace  of  Utrecht  form,  beyond  all  question,  one  of  the 
most  shameful  pages  in  English  history." 

The  greatest  of  England's  generals  was  removed  from  the 
head  of  the  army,  and  replaced  by  a  Tory  of  no  military 
ability.  The  allies  of  England  were  most  basely  deserted ; 
and  a  clause  was  inserted  in  the  treaty  respecting  New- 
foundland to  the  following  effect :  — 

'*  But  it  is  allowed  to  the  subjects  of  France  to  practise 
fishing  and  to  dry  fish  on  land  in  that  part  only  which 
stretches  from  the  place  called  Bonavista  to  the  Northern 
Point  of  the  said  Island,  and  from  thence,  running  down  by 
the  Western  Side,  reaches  as  far  as  the  place  called  Point 
Riche."' 

What  compensation  was  given  by  France  in  return  for 
this  right  to  catch  and  dry  fish  on  a  part  of  the  Newfound- 
land shore } 

That  was  the  immense  accession  of  guilty  wealth  acquired 
by  the  Assiento  Treaty,  by  which  England  obtained  the 
monopoly  of  the  slave-trade  to  the  Spanish  colonies. 

In  the  one  hundred  and  six  years  from  1680  to  1786  Eng- 
land sent  2,130,000  slaves  to  America  and  the  West  Indies. 

On  this  point  Lecky  writes :  "  It  may  not  be  uninterest- 
ing to  observe  that,  among  the  few  parts  of  the  Peace  of 
Utrecht  which  appear  to  have  given  unqualified  satisfaction 
at  home,  was  the  Assiento  contract,  which  made  of  England 


SLAVE    TRADE 


21 


the  great  slave-trader  of  the  world.  JTie  last  prelate  ivlio  took 
a  leading  part  in  Etiglisli  politics  affixed  his  signature  to 
the  treaty.  A  'I'e  Deum,  composed  by  Handel,  was  sung 
in  thanksgiving  in  the  churches.  Theological  passions  had 
been  recentlv  more  vehementlv  aroused ;  and  theolo<iical 
controversies  had  for  some  years  acquired  a  wider  and 
more  absorbing  interest  in  England  than  in  any  period 
since  the  Commonwealth,  But  it  does  not  yet  appear  to 
have  occurred  to  any  class  that  a  national  policy,  which 
made  it  its  main  object  to  encourage  the  kidnapping  of  tens 
of  thousands  of  negroes,  and  their  consignment  to  the  most 
miserable  slavery,  might  be  at  least  as  inconsistent  with  the 
spirit  of  the  Christian  religion  as  either  the  establishment  of 
Presbyterianism  or  the  toleration  of  prelacy  in  Scotland." 

Is  it  not  characteristic  that,  just  as  the  Tories  of  Queen 
Anne's  time  were  willing  to  prejudice  the  rights  of  a  colony 
in  return  for  the  mfamous  profits  of  the  slave-trade,  so  the 
Tory  of  1862,  Lord  Robert  CeciL  was  among  the  chief  Eng- 
lishmen who  sympathized  with  the  slaveholders  who  were 
then  attacking  the  American  Union  ? 

It  is  equally  characteristic  that  this  first  of  the  Primrose 
Dames,  Abigail  Masham,  quarrelled  with  her  cousin  Harley 
about  the  share  which  this  lady  of  High  Church  principles 
was  to  receive  out  of  the  profits  of  the  infamous  trade. 

Surely,  the  country  that  made  so  much  profit  out  of  the 
slave-trade  is  bound  to  compensate  Newfoundland  for  the 
losses  caused  by  its  weakness  in  the  French  shore  question 
rather  than  that  France  which  in  17 13  abandoned  the  in- 
famous traffic  to  the  British  Tories. 

The  next  treaty  between  France  and  England,  that  of 
Aix-la-Chapelle,  in  1748,  made  no  alteration  in  the  New- 
foundland question  ;  but  the  government  of  England,  in 
returning  Louisbourg  to  the  French,  gave  another  of  those 
proofs  of  the  selfish  indifference  of  the  home  government 
to  the  rights  of  the  colonies  which  was  one  of  the  most 
potent  causes  that  led  the  New  Englanders,  with  the  aid  of 
France,  to  achieve  their  independence. 


^m 


22 


LOUISBOURG    AND    AIX-LA-CHAPELLE 


lit  ■ 


At  the  south-eastern  extremity  of  Cape  Breton  Island 
the  strong  fortress  of  Louisbourg,  which  it  was  once  the 
fashion,  to^  call  the  Gibraltar  of  America,  threatened  the 
safety  of  the  New  England  and  Newfoundland  fisheries 
alike.  Governor  Shirley  of  Massachusetts  induced  the 
legislature  to  undertake  an  expedition  against  this  fortress, 
and  intrusted  its  command  to  Colonel  William  Pepperell. 
The  New  England  forces,  raw  troops,  commanded  by  un- 
trained officers,  astonished  the  world  by  capturing  a  fortress 
which  was  deemed  impregnable.  This  was  the  most  brill- 
iant and  decisive  achievement  of  nine  years  of  otherwise 
useless  bloodshed  and  treachery. 

It  is  well  that  the  people  of  the  United  States  propose  to 
celebrate  its  one  hundred  and  fiftieth  anniversary  this  year; 
for,  more  than  any  other  event  in  their  colonial  history,  it  gave 
them  confidence  in  the  power  of  untrained  men  of  spirit  to 
overcome  the  hireling  soldiers  of  the  European  governments. 

But  the  action  of  the  British  government  at  the  Treaty  of 
Aix-la-Chapelle,  in  restoring  this  fortress  to  the  French, 
gave  the  colonists  an  equally  necessary  lesson.  What  did 
England  get  in  exohange  ?  The  already  mentioned  Assi- 
ento,  that  famous  compact  which  gave  to  England  the  right 
to  ship  slaves  to  the  Spanish  colonies,  was  confirmed  for  the 
four  years  it  still  had  to  run  ;  and  the  fortress  of  Madras, 
which  had  been  taken  by  the  French  in  1746,  was  restored 
to  England  in  1748  by  the  treaty.  Even  the  most  selfish 
and  heartless  of  British  politicians  may  doubt  whether  the 
true  interests  of  his  country  were  served  by  abandoning 
the  American  fortress  for  that  of  India  ;  but  the  American 
statesman  will  not  fail  to  see  in  the  conduct  of  England 
towards  her  American  colonists  in  this  transaction  a  justifi- 
cation not  alone  for  the  Declaration  of  Independence,  but 
also  for  that  Monroe  doctrine  which,  in  its  fullest  applica- 
tion, will  prevent  the  interference  of  any  European  power  in 
the  affairs  of  any  part  of  America,  not  excluding  Newfound- 
land.    The   Treaty  of    Paris,  in    1763,  which    made    Gr'^at 


ENGLISH     PERSKCUTIONS    IN    IRELAND 


23 


Britain  practically  master  of  North  America,  produced  no 
change  in  the  position  of  the  13,000  settlers  then  in  New- 
foundland. For  them  the  London  government  cared  noth- 
ing. The  provisions  of  the  treaty,  by  which  France  gave 
up  Canada  to  England,  only  served  to  emphasize  more 
strongly  the  injustice  done  by  England  to  her  Catholic 
population,  both  in  Ireland  and  in  Newfoundland. 

In  1719  the  Irish  Privy  Council,  all  tools  of  England, 
actually  proposed  to  the  London  government  that  every 
unregistered  priest  or  friar  remaining  in  Ireland  after  the 
ist  of  May,  1720,  should  be  castrated;  and,  although  the 
English  ministers  did  not  accept  this  suggestion,  they 
adopted  one  that  such  priests  should  have  a  large  P 
branded  with  a  red-hot  iron  on  their  cheeks.  It  can  be 
hardly  wondered  at  that  the  more  honest  Irishmen  sought 
refuge  from  such  infamies  either  in  foreign  service  or  in  the 
colonies ,  and  many  of  them  came  to  Newfoundland,  only 
to  find  that  the  Church  of  England  spirit  of  persecution  was 
rampant  there  also. 

Every  government  official  was  obliged  to  abjure  the  spe- 
cial tenets  of  Catholicism.  In  1755  Governor  Darrell  com- 
manded all  masters  of  vessels  who  brought  out  Irish 
passengers  to  carry  them  back  at  the  close  of  the  fishing 
season.  A  special  tax  was  levied  on  Roman  Catholics,  and 
the  celebration  of  mass  was  made  a  penal  offence.  At  Har- 
bor Main,  Sept.  25,  1755,  the  magistrates  were  ordered  to 
fine  a  certain  man  ^50  because  he  had  allowed  a  priest 
to  celebrate  mass  in  one  of  his  fishing-rooms.  The  room 
was  ordered  to  be  demolished,  and  the  owner  to  sell  his 
possessions  and  quit  the  harbor.  Another  who  was  present 
at  the  same  mass  was  fined  ;i^2o,  and  his  house  and  stage 
destroyed  by  fire.  Other  Catholics,  who  had  not  been  pres- 
ent, were  fined  ;^io  each,  and  ordered  to  leave  the  settle- 
ment. These  infamies  were  not  altered  until  the  Tory 
government  was  humiliated  by  the  victory  of  the  United 
States  and  their  allies.     But  even  then  the   Newfoundland 


!   ' 


24 


NEWFOUNDLAND    LOYALTY 


settlers  were  taught  that  pjigland  treats  her  loyal  colonist 
more  harshly  than  the  possible  rebel. 

The  Newfoundland  settlers,  Catholic  or  Protestant,  had 
proved  the  most  loyal  men  in  the  colony. 

When  the  P'rench,  under  D'Iberville,  captured  St.  John's, 
and  all  Newfoundland  lay  at  their  feet,  the  solitary  excei> 
tion  was  the  little  Island  of  Carbonear  in  Conception  Bay, 
where  the  persecuted  settler  John  Pypn  and  his  gallant 
band  still  held  aloft  the  British  flag.  In  1704-5  St.  John's 
was  again  laid  waste  by  the  French,  under  Subercase : 
and,  although  Colonel  Moody  successfully  defended  the 
fort,  the  town  was  burned,  and  all  the  settlements  about 
Conception  ]]ay  were  raided  by  the  French  and  their  Indian 
allies.  Jkit  Pynn  and  Davis  bravely  and  successfully  de- 
fended their  island  Gibraltar  in  Conception  Bay. 

In  1708  Saint  Ovide  surprised  and  captured  St.  John's, 
but  again  old  John  Pynn  held  the  fort  at  Carbonear. 

In  the  American  War  one  of  Pynn's  descendants,  a  clerk 
at  Harbor  Grace,  raised  a  company  of  grenadiers  from 
Conception  Bay ;  and  they  fought  with  such  success  in 
Canada  that  he  was  knighted  as  Sii  Henry  Pynn,  and 
raised  to  the  rank  of  general.  Ikit  the  selfish  government 
at  home  cared  nothing  for  Newfoundland.  The  first  Con- 
gress of  the  United  States,  Sept.  5,  1774,  forbade  all  ex- 
ports to  the  British  possessions.  This  would  not  have  hurt 
Newfoundland  if  the  settlers  had  been  allowed  to  carrv 
on  agricultural  pursuits  there.  But  these  had  always  been 
discouraged  by  the  English ;  and  so  they  were  dependent 
on  the  New  England  States  for  their  supplies,  and  were 
threatened  with  absolute  famine  as  soon  as  the  war  broke 
out.  Had  they  been  disloyal,  they  vught  have  gained  their 
rights  from  England ;  but  their  very  loyalty  to  such  a  gov- 
ernment was  their  worst  misfortune. 

Even  in  1783  the  Englishman  had  not  learned  the  evil 
results  of  permitting  royal  interference  in  British  politics. 
It  is  not  merely  in  the  reigns  of  the  libertine  kings  that  we 


,  1'   I 


INFLUENCK    OV     ROYALTY 


see  this.  Queen  Elizabeth  injured  England  by  interfering 
with  the  policy  of  its  wisest  statesmen.  The  ascendency  of 
Harley  and  Saint  John  Bolingbroke,  who  deserted  Eng- 
land's allies  and  threw  away  the  fruits  of  Marlborough's 
victories,  w^as  due  to  the  influence  of  a  High  Church  wait- 
ing-woman over  Queen  Anne ;  and  now,  when  even  Lord 
North,  to  say  nothing  of  the  better  class  of  Englishmen,  dis- 
approved of  George  II  I. 's  obstinate  resistance  to  the  just 
claims  of  the  American  colonies,  the  support  given  to  the 
king  by  the  Tories  led  to  the  loss  of  a  dominion  far  more 
valuable  to  England  than   all  the  trade  of  India  or  China. 

He  was  obliged  to  call  on  a  Liberal  minister  to  undo,  as 
far  as  possible,  the  evil  done  by  himself  and  the  Tories, 
just  as  in  later  days  Mr.  Gladstone  had  to  settle  with  the 
United  States  the  damage  done  bv  the  Tories  in  the  "  Ala- 
bama  "  question. 

The  death  of  Rockingham  left  the  direction  of  the  nego- 
tiations with  France  and  the  United  States  in  the  hands  of 
Lord  Shelburne ;  and  that  he  was  extremely  liberal  in  his 
arrangements  with  both  countries  was  not  to  be  wondered 
at.  The  wrong  had  been  done  by  England ;  and  the  inno- 
cent English  had  to  suffer,  as  well  as  the  guilty  ones.  Un- 
fortunately for  Newfoundland,  Shelburne  did  not  cede  this 
island  to  the  United  States  ;  and  so  it  had  to  bear  more 
than  its  share  in  the  misfortunes  which  the  policy  of  King 
George  had  brought  upon  the  liritish  empire. 

Mr.  Spearman  (pa;  411)  writes  that  "Adams,  the 
United  States  envoy,  himself  bred  up  among  the  New  Eng- 
land fishermen,  said  '  he  would  fight  the  war  all  over  again ' 
rather  than  give  up  the  ancestral  right  of  the  New  Eng- 
landers  to  the  Newfoundland  fisheries " ;  but  that  Shel- 
burne should  be  able,  when  France  and  America  were  victo- 
rious, to  take  away  from  the  former  power  the  concessions 
made  to  it  by  the  Tories  in  17 13  and  in  1763  was  not  to  be 
expected. 

There  was  a  slight  alteration  in  the  shore  line  on  which 


1 


a 


26  DR.    O  DONNELL 

the  French  might  fish.  They  abandoned  that  right  between 
Cape  Bonavista  and  Cape  St.  John,  in  consideration  of 
being  allowed  to  catch  and  dry  their  fish  along  the  shore 
between  Point  Riche  and  Cape  Ray.  That  was  all ;  and 
that  is  precisely  the  reason  why  the  Beaconsfield-Salisbury 
cabinet,  in  1878,  refused  their  sanction  to  the  Bay  St. 
George  Railroad. 

The  only  advantage  that  the  poor  Newfoundlanders  gained 
from  the  war  which  caused  them  so  much  distress  was  the 
fact  that  the  English  government  was  7i<hippcd  into  conced- 
ing to  their  Roman  Catholic  population  some  of  the  rights 
which  for  many  years  afterwards  it  obstinately  withheld 
from  their  brethren  in  Ireland. 

In  1784  Vice-Admiral  John  Campbell,  a  man  of  liberal, 
enlightened  spirit,  was  appointed  governor,  and  issued  an 
order  that  all  persons  inhabiting  the  island  were  to  have 
full  liberty  of  conscience,  and  the  free  exercise  of  all  such 
modes  of  religious  worship  as  locre  not  pro!  ibitcd  by  law. 

In  the  same  year  the  Rev.  Dr.  O'Donnell  came  out  to 
Newfoundland  as  its  prefect  apostolic.  But  the  liberal 
movement  did  not  last  long.  Lord  Shelburne  retired,  and 
from  1784  till  the  passing  of  the  Reform  Bill  in  1832  the 
Tories  mismanaiied  the  affairs  of  (Jreat  Britain  and  her- 
colonies. 

One  great  advi  ntage  of  American  independence  was  that 
it  gave  the  world  a  fair  chance  of  judging  between  the  results 
of  republican  and  royal  government  in  colonial  affairs. 

We  have  certainly  much  that  is  rotten  in  the  United 
States  ;  but,  when  we  compare  our  republic  at  its  worst  with 
British  colonial  administration,  we  can  find  good  reason  to 
be  thankful  for  the  crowning  mercy  of  1781,  when  Washing- 
ton, Lafayette,  and  I)e  Grasse  gained  their  decisive  victory 
over  the  troops  of  King  George. 

I  will  not  now  refer  to  England's  use  of  her  immense 
power  in  India,  China,  and  Japan.  As  I  watched  the  course 
of  the  Congress  of   Religions  at  Chicago  in   1893,  I  could 


CHURCH    IMOI.KRANCE 


not  help  thinking  that  the  impressions  taken  from  that 
Congress  by  our  Oriental  visitors  would  bear  fruit  that  in 
due  course  may  teach  even  his  Grace,  the  Archbishop  of 
Canterbury,  something  about  England's  criminal  neglect 
of  Christian  duty  to  these  people.  For  us  it  is  enough  to 
compare  our  position  with  that  of  the  two  unfortunate 
islands  nearer  our  own  shores,  Ireland  and  Newfoundland. 

Suppose  we  had  been  cursed  with  the  rule  of  British 
'I'ories  since  1783,  is  it  likely  that  our  condition  would  have 
been  better  than  that  of  these  islands  ? 

F.ven  such  small  instalments  of  justice  as  Mr,  Gladstone 
has  been  able  to  secure  through  his  splendid  fight  for  *'  jus- 
tice to  Ireland  "  are  due  far  more  to  the  pressure  exercised 
on  England  by  the  Irish  in  America  than  to  British  sense  of 
right.  Poor  Newfoundland  has  had  no  Ireland  in  America 
to  help  her.  She  has  been  among  the  most  loyal  of  Eng- 
land's colonies,  and  because  of  her  loyalty  she  has  been  the 
most  shamefully  treated. 

It  might  be  expected  that  Irish  Catholics  would  emigrate 
in  large  numbers  to  Newfoundland  to  escape  the  infamous 
penal  laws  by  which  King  George  oppressed  them  in  Ire- 
land, and  that  sailors  from  all  parts  of  Great  Britain  would 
seek  there  a  shelter  from  the  press-gangs  at  home.  Dr. 
O'Donnell,  the  first  regularly  authorized  Catholic  priest  on 
the  island,  applied  in  1790  for  leave  to  build  a  chapel  in  an 
outport  :  and,  the  Tories  being  in  power.  Governor  Milbanke 
replied:  "The  Governor  acquaints  Mr.  O'Donnell  [omitting 
the  title  of  Rev.]  that,  so  far  from  being  disposed  to  allow 
of  an  increase  of  places  of  religious  worship  for  the  Roman 
Catholics  of  the  island,  he  very  seriously  intends  next  year 
to  lay  those  established  already  under  particular  restrictions. 
Mr.  O'Donnell  must  be  aware  that  it  is  not  the  interest  of 
Great  Britain  to  encourage  people  to  winter  in  Newfound- 
land ;  and  he  cannot  be  ignorant  that  many  of  the  lower 
order  who  would  now  stay  would,  if  it  were  not  for  the  con- 
venience with  which  they  obtain  absolv  here,  go  home 


28 


CATHOLIC    LOYALTY 


U^i'U 


for  it,  at  least  once  in  two  or  three  years.  And  the  Governor 
has  been  misinformed,  if  Mr.  O'Donnell,  instead  of  advising 
his  hearers  to  return  to  Ireland,  does  not  rather  encourage 
them  to  winter  in  this  country.  On  board  the  '  Salisbury, '^ 
Nov.  2,  1790." 

D  we  need  clearer  proofs  than  that  to  show  us  who  is 
resp  "ble  for  the  misery  both  of  Newfoundland  and  of 
Irelaw^. .''  This  Catholic  priest,  to  whom  the  Tory  governor 
refuses  both  his  religious  rights  and  the  titles  given  him  by 
his  church  and  university,  knew  how  to  return  good  for  evil. 

In  1800  a  mutinous  plot  was  concocted  among  the  soldiers 
of  the  Royal  Newfoundland  Regiment  to  desert  with  their 
arms,  and,  being  joined  by  their  friends  outside,  to  plunder 
St.  John's,  and  afterwards  escape  to  the  United  States. 
Fortunately,  Dr.  O'Donnell,  who  had  meanwhile  become 
bishop  of  St.  John's,  discovered  the  plot,  and  not  only 
warned  the  commanding  ofiicer,  but  exerted  all  his  own 
influence  among  the  Catholics  of  the  town  to  prevent  an 
outbreak. 

The  British  government  gave  him  the  miserable  pension 
o^  £s°  ^  y^^^j  while  they  pay  one  of  ;^6,ooo  a  year  to 
the  Duke  of  Richmond,  for  no  better  reason  than  that  he 
was  descended  from  the  bastard  son  of  that  Louise  de  la 
Querouaille  who  was  the  French  mistress  of  King  Charles  II. 

Chief  Justice  Reeves  had  been  sent  out  from  England 
to  report  on  the  condition  of  the  country ;  and  his  "  History 
of  the  Government  of  Newfoundland "  shows  that  the 
ascendency  so  long  maintained  by  a  mercantile  monopoly 
for  narrow  and  selfish  purpose  had  prevented  the  settlement 
of  the  country,  the  development  of  its  resources,  and  the 
establishment  of  a  proper  system  for  the  administration  of 
government.  Soon  afterwards,  in  1796,  Admiral  Walde- 
grave  was  appointed  governor.  The  merchants  of  Burin 
complained  to  him  that  some  of  their  fishermen  wanted  to 
emigrate  to  Nova  Scotia.  The  merchants  desired  to  pre- 
vent this. 


: 


OPPRESSION    OP'    SETTLERS 


29 


Admiral  Waldegrave  rejjorted  thereon :  "  Unless  these 
poor  wretches  emigrate,  they  must  starve  ;  for  how  can  it 
be  otherwise,  while  the  merchant  has  the  power  of  setting 
his  own  price  on  the  supplies  issued  to  the  fishermen  and 
on  the  fish  that  the  people  catch  for  him  ?  Thus  we  see  a 
set  of  unfortunate  beings  worked  iike  slaves,  and  hazarding 
their  lives,  when  at  the  expiration  of  their  term  (Jiowever 
successful  their  exertions)  they  find  themselves  not  only  with- 
out gain,  but  so  deeply  indebted  as  forces  them  to  emigrate 
or  drive  them  to  despair."  He  further  relates  how  the 
merchants  refused  to  allow  a  tax  of  sixpence  per  gallon  on 
rum,  to  help  them  to  defray  administrative  expenses ;  and 
he  describes  the  merchants  as  "  opposed  to  every  measure 
of  government  which  a  governor  may  think  proper  to  pro- 
pose for  the  general  benefit  of  the  island." 

But  even  this  Governor  Waldegrave,  though  he  so  clearly 
saw  the  true  cause  of  the  evil,  sternly  refused  the  only 
remedy  within  reach,  which  was  to  grant  the  poor  wretches 
the  right  to  use  the  waste,  uncultivated  land  which  existed 
in  so  great  abundance  round  about  them. 

He  was  so  far  from  doing  this  that,  when  about  to  leave, 
he  put  on  record,  in  1799,  for  the  use  of  his  successor,  that 
he  had  made  no  promise  of  any  grant  of  land,  save  one  to 
the  officer  commanding  the  troops,  and  that  was  not  to 
be  held  by  any  other  person.  That  is  the  way  in  which 
Britain's  Tories  have  cared  for  her  colonies. 

Hatton  and  Harvey  say:  "In  many  of  the  smaller  and 
more  remote  settlements  successive  generations  lived  and 
died  without  education  and  religious  teaching  of  any  kind. 
The  lives  of  the  people  were  rendered  hard  and  misera- 
ble for  the  express  purpose  of  driving  them  away.  The 
governors  of  those  days  considered*  that  loyalty  to  Kngland 
rendered  it  imperative  on  them  to  depopulate  Newfound- 
land." 

How  did  England  stand  meanwhile  towards  the  other 
nation,  that  of  France,  which  had  claims  on  Newfoundland  .'* 


3° 


THE    TORIES    AND    FRANCE 


This  country  had  exercised  its  right  to  replace  the  Bourbons 
by  the  republic,  just  as  P^ngland  had  replaced  the  Stuarts 
by  the  Guelphs, 

But  the  Germans  and  Austrians  had  insolently  interfered 
in  the  private  affairs  of  France,  and  so  made  a  military 
leader,  in  the  person  of  Napoleon  Bonaparte,  absolutely 
indispensable  for  the  protection  of  the  country  against 
foreign  foes. 

No  sooner  was  Napoleon  seated  on  the  consular  throne  — 
he  had  not  then  become  emperor  —  than  he  addressed  a 
letter  to  King  George  III.,  urging  the  restoration  of  peace. 
"The  war  which  has  ravaged  for  eight  years  the  four 
quarters  of  the  globe,  is  it,"  he  asks,  "to  be  eternal?" 
"  France  and  i^ngland,"  he  concludes,  "  may,  by  the  abuse 
of  their  strength,  still  for  a  time  retard  the  period  of  their 
exhaustion  ;  but  I  will  venture  to  say  the  fate  of  all  civilized 
nations  is  attached  to  the  termination  of  a  war  which  in- 
volves the  whole  world." 

And  what  did  England's  Tory  king  answer  .•*  He  in- 
trusted the  reply  to  Grenville,  who  was  then  the  British 
minister  for  foreign  affairs,  and  wrote  to  th.i  C'onsul  Bona- 
parte that,  while  his  Britannic  Majesty  did  not  positively 
make  the  restoration  of  the  Bourbons  an  indispensable  con- 
dition of  peace,  nor  claim  to  prescribe  to  France  her  form 
of  government,  he  would  intimate  that  only  the  one  was 
likely  to  secure  the  other,  and  that  he  had  not  sufficient 
^respect  for  her  new  ruler  to  entertain  his  proposals.  Can 
we  wonder  that  after  so  insolent  a  letter  the  first  consul 
became  emperor  ? 

France  is  quite  as  proud  as  England ;  and  the  insolence 
of  the  Guelph,  in  presuming  to  insinuate  that  her  first 
consul  was  not  as  good  as  he,  was  quite  enough  to  provoke 
her  into  making  the  consul  her  emperor,  and  doing  her  best 
to  chastise  her  insulters.  Charles  James  Fox,  in  Parlia- 
ment, pronounced  the  roy:t  answer  "  odiously  and  absurdly 
wrong"  ;  but  the  squires  and  borough-mongers  of  the  House 


THE    DUKE    OF    YORK    AND    HIS    MISTRESS 


31 


of  Commons  supported  the  action  of  the  king  by  a  majority 
of  265  to  64.  It  is  for  such  infamies  as  this  that  New- 
foundland has  even  to-day  to  bear  all  the  inconveniences 
of  the  French  claims  on  their  shores.  I  do  not  blame  the 
French  for  insisting  that  England  shall  scuttle  out  of  Egypt 
before  she  yields  her  claims  in  Newfoundlan  •  ;  but  it  is  the 
responsible  English,  and  not  the  innocent  Newfoundlanders, 
who  ought  to  pay  the  cost,  and  the  conduct  of  England  in 
insisting  that  Newfoundland  shall  bear  the  burden  is 
cowardly  and  mean  beyond  all  expression. 

While  the  Tories  were  thus  hurling  England  into  war,  it 
is  interesting  to  observe  how  the  Guelphs  conducted  it. 
The  Duke  of  York,  with  a  generalship  worthy  of  his  family, 
led  an  army  of  British  and  Russian  soldiers  into  a  captivity 
from  which  they  could  only  be  redeemed  by  the  surrender 
of  prisoners  taken  on  the  sea  by  real  Englishmen. 

Englishmen  were  taxed  in  order  to  give  the  German 
despots  money  wherewith  to  fight  the  French.  Austria  re- 
ceived for  one  campaign  more  money  than  England  had  to 
pay  even  for  the  '•  Alabama  "  claims,  and  the  czar  of  Russia 
received  ;^9oo,ooo  for  the  eight  months  his  troops  were 
in  the  field.  During  the  same  war  the  king's  second 
son,  the  same  Duke  of  York  who  had  given  so  characteristic 
a  sample  of  Guelph  generalship  in  leading  his  forces  to 
defeat,  gave  an  equally  characteristic  specimen  of  Guelph 
morality.  He  had  for  mistress  one  Mary  Ann  Clarke,  a 
woman  of  low  origin,  who  transferred  her  intimacy  to  a 
Colonel  Wardle,  and  confided  to  him  many  of  the  secrets 
of  her  relations  to  the  royal  duke.  Wardle,  on  Jan.  27, 
1809,  afifirmed  in  the  House  of  Commons  that  the  Duke  of 
York  had  permitted  Mrs.  Clarke  to  carry  on  a  traffic  in 
commissions  and  promotions,  and  demanded  a  public 
inquiry.  Mrs.  Clarke  was  examined  at  the  bar  of  the 
House  of  Commons  for  several  weeks,  displaying  a  shame- 
less, witty  impudence  that  drew  continual  applause  and 
laughter  from  a  mob  of  English  gentle »h  /,  many  of  whom 


32 


THE    Dl'KK    OF    YORK    AS    A    CHURCHMAN 


y 


iff- 


iill 
■ii« 


ill: 


:!  ■ 


knew  her  too  well.  The  charges  were  proved,  and  the 
Duke  of  York  resigned  his  position  as  commander-in-chief ; 
and  the  disclosures  made  —  doctors 'of  divinity  suing  for 
bishoprics,  and  priests  for  preferment,  at  the  feet  of  a 
harlot,  kissing  her  palm  with  coin  —  may  teach  Englishmen 
what  they  have  to  guard  against  even  to-day  on  the  part 
of  that  Tory  party  that  has  religion,  conscience,  and  mo- 
rality much  more  on  its  lips  than  in  its  heart. 

It  is  not  altogether  irrelevant  in  this  connection  to 
mention  that  in  1825,  when  the  Catholic  relief  bill  had 
passed  the  House  of  Commons  by  268  votes  against  241, 
the  Duke  of  York  opposed  the  repeal  of  the  Catholic  dis- 
abilities by  the  common  Tory  appeal  to  what  they  call 
conscience,  saying  "  these  were  the  principles  to  which  he 
would  adhere,  and  which  he  would  maintain  and  act  up  to, 
to  the  latest  moment  of  his  life  existence,  whatever  might 
be  his  situation  in  life,  so  /ie//>  him  Gody 

England  has  indeed  had  to  pay  dearly  for  her  hereditary 
monarchy,  and  for  the  awful  hypocrisy  which  permits  the 
appeal  to  God  by  such  State  Churchmen  as  the  Duke  of 
York  to  have  any  efifect  on  politics.  I  need  hardly  say  that 
the  House  of  Lords  did  with  the  Catholic  Emancipation 
Bill  what  it  has  lately  done  with  the  House  of  Commons 
Bill  for  Home  Rule  in  Ireland,  and  threw  it  out. 

While  England  was  fighting  Erance,  she  had  also  to  fight 
the  United  States.  It  is  an  episode  of  which  neither 
country  has  any  reason  to  be  proud.  The  New  Englanders 
were  mostly  opposed  to  the  declaration  of  war.  The  aver- 
age Englishman  knows  little  about  it.  He  is  taught  by  his 
history  books  that  the  victory  of  the  "  Shannon  "  over  the 
"  Chesapeake "  destroyed  the  prestige  of  the  American 
navy ;  and  he  is  wTong  even  in  that. 

The  "  Shannon  "  had  a  brave  and  able  commander,  and 
had  been  many  weeks  at  sea,  so  that  Captain  Broke  had 
been  able  to  train  his  men  thoroughly,  and,  above  all  things, 
to  prevent  them  from  getting  drunk. 


TREATY  OF  1815 


33 


Captain  Lawrence  had  to  engage  many  men  who  had 
never  been  on  a  war-vessel  before,  and  did  not  know  how 
to  work  the  guns.  Many  of  the  sailors  had  bottles  of  rum 
in  their  pockets,  and  were  too  drunk  to  stand  when  their 
ship  got  within  fighting  distance  of  the  "  Shannon." 

I  wish  our  present  Secretary  of  the  Navy  would  learn  the 
lesson,  and  now,  when  the  need  of  the  Newfoundlanders  is 
so  great,  and  when  we  require  sober  men  to  man  our  navy, 
give  the  brave  fishermen  of  that  island  every  reasonable  in- 
ducement to  enlist  in  our  service. 

The  war  closed  unsatisfactorily,  by  the  mediation  of  the 
Emperor  Alexander  of  Russia ;  and  the  Treaty  of  Ghent 
left  England  mistress  of  the  seas. 

The  treaties  of  1814  and  18 15  gave  England  another 
opportunity  for  relieving  Newfoundland  from  the  French 
control  of  her  shore ;  but  the  Tories  were  at  the  helm,  and 
became  fellow-conspirators  with  other  tyrants  of  Europe  in 
perpetrating  the  most  monstrous  wrong  and  the  completest 
restoration  of  despotism  that  w^as  conceivable,  in  Germany, 
Austria,  Italy,  Spain,  everywhere. 

They  insulted  France  by  imposing  upon  her  the  rule  of  a 
Bourbon,  and  to  this  Bourbon  they  guaranteed  those  rights 
over  Newfoundland  on  which  the  French  republic  bases  its 
claims  to-day. 

Let  us  now  turn  to  Newfoundland  itself.  While  the 
nations  were  fighting,  its  merchants  had  enjoyed  the  monop- 
oly of  the  cod-fisheries.  Some  of  the  capitalists  had  secured 
profits  between  ;^2o,ooo  and  ^40,000  a  year  each,  but 
they  made  the  poor  fishermen  pay  eight  pounds  a  barrel  for 
flour  and  twelve  pounds  a  barrel  for  pork.  They  took  their 
fortunes  to  England.  No  effort  was  made  to  open  up  roads 
or  extend  agriculture ;  for,  if  it  had  been  done,  the  landlords 
of  England  would  not  have  been  able  to  sell  their  pork  and 
wheat  at  such  exorbitant  prices  there. 

So,  when  the  war  ceased  and  other  nations  were  enabled 
to  compete  in  the  fisheries,  the  colony  had  to  pass  through 


34 


SUFFERINO    IN    THE    COLONY 


f     ; 
J 


!         i 


some  years  of  disaster  and  suffering,  while  the  merchants 
were  spending  their  exorbitant  profits  in  England. 

The  planters  and  fishermen  had  been  in  thf  habit  of  leav- 
ing their  savings  in  the  hands  of  the  St.  John's  merchants. 
Many  of  these  failed,  and  the  hardly  won  money  of  the 
fishermen  was  swept  away  by  the  insolvency  of  their  bankers. 
It  is  estimated  that  the  working  class  lost  a  sum  little  short 
of  ^400,000  sterling. 

Now,  eighty  years  later,  we  have  another  instance  of  the 
same  misfortunes,  proceeding  from  the  same  cause, —  the  fact 
that  the  money  made  by  the  fishery  has  been  taken  off  to 
England ;  that  the  banks,  which  are  altogether  in  the  hands 
of  the  mercantile,  or  English,  party,  have  been  unfaithful  to 
their  trust ;  and  that  the  fishermen  who  hold  the  bankers' 
notes  get,  from  the  one  bank,  80  cents,  and,  from  the  other, 
only  20  cents  on  the  dollar. 

The  merchants  applied  for  aid  to  the  British  government ; 
and  in  June,  18 17,  a  committee  of  the  House  of  Commons 
met.  The  merchants  had  only  two  remedies  to  propose. 
One  was  the  granting  of  a  bounty,  to  enable  them  to  com- 
pete with  the  French  and  the  Americans,  who  were  sus- 
tained by  bounties  ;  but,  although  England  was  a  protection 
ist  country  at  that  time,  it  gave  only  bounties  in  favor  of  rich 
men,  and  not  of  the  poor.  The  other  was  the  deportation  of 
the  principal  part  of  the  inhabitants,  now  numbering  70,000, 
to  the  neighboring  colonies. 

The  honest,  sensible,  easy  plan,  that  of  opening  up  the 
fand  to  cultivation,  so  that  the  starving  people  might  be  able 
to  grow  their  own  food  and  breed  their  own  cattle,  was  the 
one  thing  that  these  so-called  practical  Englishmen  would 
not  permit,  because  it  might  interfere  with  the  profits  of  the 
British  land-owner  and  merchant. 

At  that  very  time  the  local  authorities  of  Massachusetts 
were  giving   a   bounty  for    each   Newfoundland  fisherman 
brought  into  the  State. 
t     When  Sir  Thomas  Cochrane  was  made  governor  in  1825, 


^ 


MERCHANT    AND    LANDLORD 


35 


his  government  made  the  first  road  in  the  island.  For  one 
hundred  and  forty-five  years  England  had  been  master  of 
the  island,  and  not  a  single  road  had  been  built  suitable  for 
wheeled  carriages.  Is  it  conceivable  that  the  French  would 
so  completely  have  neglected  the  colony  if  they  had  been  its 
masters  ? 

In  1832,  when  the  Reform  Bill  put  an  end  to  the  malign 
influence  of  Tory  ascendency  in  England,  Newfoundland 
also  gained  the  boon  of  representative  government :  but 
it  was  only  a  merchants*  government.  The  people  who 
elected  the  House  of  Asserablv  did  not  dare  to  vote  against 
the  will  of  the  merchants  for  fear  of  losing  employment; 
and,  while  their  representatives  had  the  power  of  debating, 
passing  measures,  and  voting  moneys,  the  Council,  which 
was  composed  of  nominees  of  the  crown,  selected  exclu- 
sively from  the  merchant  class,  could  throw  out  all  their 
measures,  and  were  irresponsible  to  the  people. 

In  England  King  George  IV.  had  rendered  only  one  service 
to  the  people, —  he  had  brought  royalty  into  contempt,  and 
so  strengthened  the  feeling  which  resulted  in  the  passage  of 
many  necessary  measures  which  his  father  and  brothers 
had  opposed.  But  the  selfish  interests  of  the  merchants 
and  land-owners  of  England  were  still  in  the  way  of  many 
reforms.  Benjamin  Disraeli,  who  did  his  worst  to  prevent 
the  starving  people  from  haxing  cheap  bread,  became  the 
flunkey  and  afterward  the  master  of  the  Tory  squires ;  and 
it  was  not  until  thousands  had  died  of  famine  in  Ireland 
that  the  selfish  land-owners  agreed  to  that  reduction  of  duty 
on  grain  which  made  free  trade  so  f>opular  in  England. 

Now,  by  a  wise  colonization  policy,  the  government  might 
have  helped  both  Ireland  and  Newfoundland. 

By  passing  a  law  to  the  effect  that,  so  long  as  the  French 
gave  a  bounty  on  the  export  of  salt  fish,  the  English  gov- 
ernment would  give  their  own  fishermen  exactly  the  same 
amount  of  protection,  the  French  would  soon  have  been 
brought    to   terms  ;  and,  by  opening  up   Newfoundland  to 


36 


OPIUM    WAR    IN    CHINA 


it. 


r 


settlement  by  roads  and  railways,  many  of  the  starving  Irish 
would  have  been  provided  with  homes  und^r  the  IJritish  flag 
far  more  comfortable  than  any  that  they  could  find  in  their 
native  land.  So  a  more  prosperous  Ireland  would  have 
risen  on  this  side  of  the  Atlantic,  and  England  would  have 
gained  thereby.  The  Irish  and  the  Catholic  were  really 
quite  as  loyal  to  the  empire  as  any  others.  .The  difference 
was  that  the  English  High  Churchman  and  the  Scotch  Pres- 
byterian got  all  the  privileges ;  and  the  Irishman  and  the 
Catholic  were  taught  by  the  action  of  the  British  government 
that  insurrection  was  their  only  hope  of  getting  simple  jus- 
tice. \-\ 

India,  China,  Newfoundland,  Ireland,  were  simply  sweaters'        j 
dens  for  the  profit  of  England  and  Scotland.  ,.    /  / 

Just  as  in  Newfoundland  the  British  merchant  insisted  on 
keeping  out  every  trace  of  free  trade  that  would  enable  the 
poor  fisherman  to  sell  his  fish  in  the  highest  market  and 
buy  his  provisions  in  the  lowest,  so  in  China  the  British 
in  1838  insisted  on  forcing  the  Chinaman  to  buy  the  poison- 
ous opium  of  India,  although  in  1834  the  China  government 
had  warned  the  British  of  their  intention  to  prohibit  the 
infamous  traffic.  The  war  that  England  thereupon  pro- 
claimed against  China  was  one  of  the  most  infamous  and 
cowardly  of  the  century,  and  made  British  Christianity  more 
hateful  even  than  its  opiiim  to  the  rulers  of  the  Celestial 
Empire.  ^4,375,000  was  extorted  from  the  Chinese  em- 
peror for  the  expenses  of  the  war  ($20,000,000),  and 
;^i, 250,000  ($5,000,000)  for  the  opium  which,  Avith  perfect 
justice,  he  had  confiscated  from  the  smugglers.  The  mob 
of  London  cheered  the  wagons  which  brought  the  ill-gotten 
treasure  through  the  streets;  and  the  mob  in  Parliament 
thanked  the  ofificers  who  had  murdered  the  helpless  and 
unoffending  Chinese,  while  the  parsons  congratulated  the 
people  on  the  opening  of  China  to  British  commerce,  British 
civilization,  and  British  religion. 

The  brutalizing  influence  of  this  method  of  carrying  on 


SIR    JOHN    nOWRINGS    WAR 


37 


the  foreign  trade  of  England  was  shown  by  a  hiter  alto- 
gether unnecessary  war  with  China  about  the  Lorcha 
"Arrow."  This  was  a  Chinese  pirate  vessel,  which  had  ob- 
tained, by  false  pretences,  the  temporary  possession  of 
the  British  ilag.  On  Oct.  8,  1856,  the  Chinese  police 
boarded  it  in  the  Canton  River,  and  took  off  twelve  China- 
men on  a  charge  of  piracy.  This  they  had  a  perfect  light 
to  do ;  but  the  British  consul,  Mr.  Parkes,  instead  of  thank- 
ing them,  demanded  the  instant  restoration  of  men  who  had 
been  flying  a  liritish  flag  under  false  pretences.  He  ap- 
plied to  Sir  John  liowring,  the  J'ritish  plenipotentiary  at 
Hong  Kong,  for  assistance.  Sir  John  was  an  able  and 
experienced  man.  He  had  been  editor  of  the  Westminster 
Review^  had  a  bowing,  if  not  a  speaking  acquaintance  with 
a  dozen  languages,  had  been  one  of  the  leaders  of  the  free 
trade  party,  and  had  a  thorough  acquaintance  with  the 
Chinese  trade.  For  many  years  he  had  been  secretary  of 
the  Peace  Society. 

He  was  the  author  of  several  hymns.  In  fact,  an  Amer- 
ican hymn  book  contains  not  less  than  seventeen  from  his 
pen.  One  of  them,  found  in  most  modern  hymn-books,  was 
that  commencing, — 

"  In  the  cross  of  Christ  I  glory" ; 

and  its  author  proceeded  to  glory  in  the  cross  of  the  Prince 
of  Peace  by  making  war  on  the  Chinese,  although  the  gov- 
ernor, Yeh,  had  sent  back  all  the  men  whose  return  was 
demanded  by  Mr.  Parkes. 

Mr.  Justin  McCarthy,  in  his  "  History  of  our  own  Times," 
says,  "  During  the  whole  business  Sir  John  Bowring  con- 
trived to  keep  himself  almost  invariably  in  the  wrong ;  and, 
even  where  his  claim  happened  to  be  in  itself  good,  he 
managed  to  assert  it  in  a  manner  at  once  untimely,  impru- 
dent, and  indecent." 

One  of  the  highest  legal  authorities  in  England,  Lord 
Lyndhurst,  declared  Sir  John  Bowring's  action,  and  that  of 


I 


38 


CHURCH    VERSUS    CHRISTIANITY 


the  British  authorities  who  aided  him,  to  be  unjustifiable  on 
any  principle  either  of  law  or  reason ;  and  Mr.  Cobden, 
himself  an  old  friend  of  Sir  John  Bowring,  moved  in  the 
House  of  Commons  that  "  the  papers  which  have  been  laid 
upon  the  table  fail  to  establish  satisfactory  grounds  for  the 
violent  measures  resorted  to  at  Canton  in  the  late  affair  of 
the  'Arrow.'  " 

Nearly  all  the  best  men  in  the  House  of  Commons  —  Glad- 
stone, Roundell  Palmer,  Sydney  Herbert,  Milner  Gibson, 
Sir  Frederick  Thesiger,  as  well  as  many  of  the  chief  Tories  — 
supported  Mr.  Cobden  ;  and  the  vote  of  censure  was  carried 
against  Lord  Palmerston's  government  by  263  to  247.  But 
Lord  Palmerston,  then  the  hero  of  the  Evangelical  Church 
party, —  "Palmerston,  the  true  Protestant,"  "Palmerston, 
the  only  Christian  Prime  Minister," — knew  exactly  the 
strength  of  British  C'hristianity  when  it  interfered  with  the 
sale  of  British  beer,  or  Indian  opium,  or  Manchester  cotton, 
and  appealed  tj  the  shop-keeper  instincts  of  the  British 
people.  He  dissolved  Parliament ;  and  Cobden,  Bright, 
Milner  Gibson,  W.  J.  Fox,  Layard,  and  many  others  were 
left  without  seats.  Manchester  rejected  John  Bright  be- 
cause he  had  spoken  in  the  interests  of  peace  and  honor, 
and  condemned  one  of  the  most  cowardly,  brutal,  and  un- 
provoked wars  of  the  century. 

We  see  the  same  cause  at  work  in  Ireland.  One  British 
bishop.  Dr.  Thirlwall,  of  St.  David's,  had  the  manliness  to 
favor  Mr.  Gladstone's  bill  for  the  disestablishment  of  the 
Irish  Church ;  but  most  of  them  acted  in  this  matter  in 
direct  opposition  to  the  teachings  of  Him  whom  they  pro- 
fess to  worship  as  their  God.  Mr.  John  Bright  warned  the 
Lords  that,  by  throwing  themselves  athwart  the  national 
course,  they  might  meet  with  "accidents  not  pleasant  to 
think  of";  and  there  is  no  doubt  that  the  warning  had  its 
effect.  And  even  now  I  do  not  think  that  the  people  of 
Ireland  will  ever  get  from  the  House  of  Lords  that  measure 
of  right  which  even  the  House  of  Commons  has  unwillingly 


A    LOST    OPPORTUNITY  39 

and  grudgingly  accorded  to  them,  unless  the  Irishmen  of 
America  come  to  their  aid  in  a  more  effective  manner  than 
they  have  ever  yet  done. 

Newfoundland,  unlike  Ireland,  has  few  friends  in  the 
United  States,  and  therefore  is  wholly  at  England's  mercy. 
What  it  suffered  in  the  past  I  have  already  told.  Let  us 
see  how  England  has  treated  it  in  the  last  few  years. 

It  was  from  Lord  Palmerston,  of  all  men,  that  the  New- 
foundlander might  hope  for  redress. 

He  had  said  in  the  Don  Pacitico  case,  "As  the  Roman 
in  the  days  of  old  held  himself  free  from  indignity  when  he 
could  say,  'Civis  Romanus  sum,'  so  also  a  Pritish  subject, 
in  whatever  land  he  be,  shall  feel  confident  that  the  watch- 
ful eye  and  the  strong  arm  of  England  shall  protect  him 
against  injustice  and  wrong." 

Surely,  the  200,000  Newfoundlanders  had  more  right  to 
expect  that  Lord  Palmerston  would  maintain  this  principle 
in  their  defence  than  the  extortionate  Portuguese  Jew  or  the 
Chinese  pirates  who  were  taken  from  the  Lorcha  "Arrow." 

And  Lord  Palmerston  had  the  best  opportunity  of  helping 
the  Newfoundlander;  for  he  was  the  intimate  friend  of 
Louis  Napoleon  and  Persigny.  By  his  approbation  of  Louis 
Napoleon's  coup  ifetat  he  became  the  creator  of  the  Anglo- 
French  Alliance  ;  and,  since  this  alliance  was  a  matter  of 
life  and  death  to  the  Second  Empire,  he  might  have  used 
the  opportunity,  after  the  Crimean  War,  of  exercising  such 
pressure  upon  Louis  Napoleon  as  to  secure  justice  to  New- 
foundland. 

Put  he  neglected  it,  and  thereby  he  lost  the  opportunity 
of  strengthening  the  position  of  England  and  Canada 
towards  the  United  States  at  the  time  of  the  "Trent"  and 
"  Alabama  "  affairs. 

We  may  be  glad  of  this ;  but,  from  a  liritish  point  of  view, 
it  was  not  merely  an  injustice  to  Newfoundland,  but  also  a 
political  blunder. 

One  would   suppose   that,  simply  as  a  matter  of  imperial 


40 


FIRST    R\IL.<OAD    PROJECT 


policy,  the  British  government  would  long  ago  have  built 
a  railroad  across  this  island,  in  order  to  have  the  quickest 
possible  connection  with  its  Canadian  dependency.  The 
Fenian  raids  into  Canada,  the  Confederate  raids  from 
Canada,  the  Red  River  Rebellion,  the  possibility  of  war 
arising  from  the  "  Trent  "  incident,  the  necessity  of  securing 
a  rapid  means  of  communication  with  the  Pacific,  should 
all,  on  purely  strategic  grounds,  have  induced  the  British 
government  to  establish  a  safe  naval  station  in  some  south- 
ern harbor  of  Newfoundland,  with  a  railroad  communication 
to  the  west  shores  of  the  island. 

But  the  government  left  the  Newfoundlanders,  impover- 
ished by  the  consequences  of  British  misrule,  to  take  the 
initiative;  and  it  was  not  until  1878  that  they  were  able  to 
do  anything.  Then  the  Hon.  William  V.  Whiteway  induced 
the  Newfoundland  government  to  offer  an  annual  subsidy 
of  $120,000  per  annum  and  liberal  grants  of  crown  lands  to 
any  company  which  would  construct  and  operate  a  railway 
across  Newfoundland,  connecting  by  steamers  with  Britain 
or  Ireland  on  the  one  hand,  and  the  Intercolonial  and  Cana- 
dian lines  on  the  other.  Of  the  immense  advantage  of  such 
a  line  to  Great  liritain,  constructed  as  it  would  be  at  the 
expense  of  Newfoundland,  I  need  hardly  speak,  and  every 
patriotic  ministry  would  have  greeted  the  proposal  with  en- 
thusiasm ;  but,  most  unfortunately  both  for  England  and 
for  Newfoundland,  the  Premier  was  Mr.  Disraeli,  and  the 
Foreign  Secretary  Lord  Salisbury.  What  Lord  Salisbury 
was  may  be  learned  from  Mr.  James  G.  Blaine's  account  of 
his  speeches  and  conduct  as  Lord  Robert  Cecil  in  1862. 
I  know  of  no  sermon  preached  within  the  last  thirty  years 
that  inculcates  a  more  necessary  moral  and  religious  lesson 
for  Lords  and  Commons  and  parsons  of  England  than  that 
taught  in  the  twentieth  chapter  of  the  Hon.  James  G. 
Blaine's  ''Twenty  Years  of  Congress."  From  it  we  may 
learn,  first  of  all,  that  the  right  of  secession  of  Ireland  or 
Newfoundland  from  the  British  empire  is  already  virtually 


■■I 


BRITISH    ENEMIES    OF    UNITED    STATES  4I 

conceded  by  many  of  the  Tory  leaders  of  England.  Mr. 
Blaine  gives  us  in  that  chapter  a  list  of  twenty-four  members 
of  the  British  House  of  Commons,  ten  members  of  the 
British  Peerage,  one  admiral,  one  vice-admiral,  one  cap- 
tain, one  colonel,  one  lieutenant  colonel,  and  a  host  of 
knights  and  baronets  who  subscribed  money  to  the  Con- 
federate Cotton  Loan,  while  he  gives  extracts  from  the 
speeches  of  Bernal  Osborne,  Lord  John  Russell,  Lord 
Palmerston,  Mr.  Gregory,  M.P.,  Mr.  G.  W.  Bentinck,  M.l\, 
Lord  Robert  Cecil,  now  Marquis  of  Salisbury,  ^L  Lindsy, 
M.P.,  Lord  Campbell,  Earl  Malmesbury,  Mr.  Laird,  M.P. 
(the  builder  of  the  "  Alabama  "  and  the  rebel  rams),  Mr. 
Horsman,  M.P.  for  Stroud,  the  Marquis  of  Clanricarde 
(a  name  familiar  to  all  Irishmen  from  its  connection  with 
the  evictions),  Mr.  Peacocke,  M.P.,  Mr.  Clifforde,  M.P.,  Mr. 
Haliburton,  M.P.,  Lord  Robert  Montague,  Sir  James  Fer- 
guson, the  Earl  of  Donoughmore,  Mr.  Alderman  Rose,  Lord 
Brougham,  and  the  Right  Hon.  William  Ewart  Gladstone, 
Chancellor  of  the  Exchequer,  breathing  hostility  to  the 
cause  of  the  Union  States  and  friendship  for  the  slave- 
holder ;  while  the  few  honest  men  in  the  House  of  Com- 
mons, who,  like  John  Bright,  Foster,  Charles  Villiers,  Milner 
Gibson,  and  Cobden,  spoke  for  the  cause  of  the  North, 
were  reviled,  not  alone  by  their  colleagues,  but  even  by 
many  of  their  constituents,  because  they  defended  the  side 
of  liberty,  truth,  and  justice. 

Why  should  we  withhold  from  the  just  cause  of  Ireland 
and  Newfoundland  the  sympathy  which  England  gave  to 
the  secessionist  slaveholder? 

Of  course  the  London  Times  was  on  the  slaveholder's 
side.  On  the  last  day  of  December,  1864,  it  said  that  "Mr. 
Seward  and  other  teachers  and  flatterers  of  the  multitude 
still  affect  to  anticipate  the  early  restoration  of  the  Union"  : 
and  in  three  months  from  that  date  the  rebels  were  con- 
quered. 

It  was  on  March  7,  1862,  that  Lord  Robert  Cecil  said  in 


42 


THE    SALISBURY-BEACONSFIELD    CABINET 


I 


I 


'■*  i'i  . 


Parliament:  "The  plain  fact  is  that  tl.w  Northern  States  of 
America  can  never  be  our  sure  fri'-.nds,  because  we  are 
rivals  politically,  rivals,  commercii^Hy,  We  aspire  to  the 
same  position.  We  both  aspire  to  the  government  of  the 
seas.  We  are  both  manufacturing  people,  and  in  every 
port  as  well  as  at  every  court  we  are  rivals  of  each  other. 
.  .  .  With  the  Southern  States  the  case  is  entirely  reversed. 
The  people  are  an  agricultural  people.  They  furnish  the 
raw  material  of  our  industry,  and  they  consume  the  prod- 
ucts which  we  make  from  it.  With  them,  therefore,  every 
interest  must  lead  us  to  cultivate  friendly  relations;  and 
we  have  seen  that,  when  the  war  began,  they  at  once  re- 
curred to  England  as  their  natural  ally." 

It  was  easy  enough  for  the  most  cowardly  man,  in  Lord 
Robert  Cecil's  position,  to  use  such  words,  even  were  he 
naught  more  than  a  lath  painted  over  to  imitate  steel. 
Even  if  England  is  ruined,  he  is  safe.  But  it  was  quite 
another  matter  when,  sixteen  years  later,  the  poor  New- 
foundlander applied  to  him  and  Disraeli-Beaconsfield  for 
the  right  to  build  a  railroad. 

Russia  had  just  declared  her  intention  of  demolishing  the 
last  unpleasant  clause  in  the  treaty  forced  upon  her  by 
P'rance  and  England  at  the  close  of  the  Crimean  War;  and 
Russia  was  a  more  dangerous  foe  than  the  Northern  States. 
And  the  story  of  the  Beaconsfield-Salisbury  connection  with 
that  affair  excited  the  laughter  of  all  other  diplomatists  in 
Europe. 

They  pretended  to  have  brought  peace  with  honor  from 
the  Conference  of  Berlin.  But  what  did  the  rest  of  Europe 
think  about  it? 

It  made  the  Christian  populations  of  the  South  believe 
that  Russia  was  their  especial  friend,  and  their  enemies  were 
England  and  the  unspeakable  Turk;  it  strengthened  among 
the  Greeks  the  impression  already  made  by  Palmerston's 
action  in  the  Don  Pacifico  case, —  that  France  war  their 
friend,  and  England  their  enemy ;  and  it  created  everywhere 


VETO    CONSTRUCTION'    OF    RAILROAD 


43 


r 
I 

I  \ 

)        : 


the  impression  that  the  Congress  was  a  theatrical  piece  of 
business,  merely  enacted  as  a  pageant  on  the  Berlin  stage. 
England  has  not  yet  paid  the  full  penalty  of  her  stupid 
acquiescence  in  the  rule  of  Disraeli  and  Salisbury;  and  it 
will  cost  her  yet  far  more  than  she  paid  for  the  results  of 
Tory  infamy  and  Whig  senility  in  the  "  Alabama  "  business, 
for  she  has  enemies  to  deal  with  who  are  far  less  generous 
and  far  slyer  than  the  people  of  the  United  States.  It  was 
under  the  Beaconsfield-Salisbury  cabinet  that  Sir  Bartle 
Frere  made  that  infamous  declaration  of  war  against  Cete- 
wayo  which  led  to  the  defeat  of  Lord  Chelmsford's  British 
troops  by  a  lot  of  half-naked  savages.  It  was  under  this 
ministry  that  the  stupid  expedition  to  Afghanistan  led  to 
the  massacre  of  Sir  Louis  Cavagnari  and  the  members  of 
his  staff.  It  was  under  this  ministry  that  the  soul-stirring 
anthem  of  Thompson, 

"  When  l?ritain  first  at  Heaven's  command," 

was  superseded  by  the  rant  of  the  Tory  street-walker, — 

"  We  don't  want  to  fight ; 
•  But,  by  jingo,  if  we  do, 

We've  got  the  ships,  we've  got  the  men, 
We've  got  the  money,  too," 

And  the  manner  in  which  the  government  used  the  ships, 
the  men,  and  the  money,  proved  that  there  was  one  thing 
needful  which  the  Jingoes  had  not  got ;  and  that  is  man- 
hood. 

To  this  Jingo  ministry  it  was,  then,  that  Sir  William  V. 
Whiteway  had  to  apply  for  the  imperial  sanction  to  the  rail- 
way;  and  sanction  was  refused.  For  what  reason  ?  The/>re- 
tended  reason  was  that  the  western  terminus  of  the  line  at 
Bay  St.  George  would  be  on  that  part  of  the  coast 
affected  by  the  French  treaty  rights.  It  may  be  open  to 
doubt  whether  the  French  claims  which  interfered  with  the 
establishment  of   a   railroad   terminus    at    Bay   St.  George 


44 


MOTIVES    FOR    VETO 


ii 

:i3 


mv. 


:« 


]l 


// 


II  I- 


were  just  or  not ;  but  there  is  not  the  slightest  doubt  that 
Lord  Palmerston,  in  his  note  of  July  lo,  1838,  to  Count 
Sebastiani,  had  maintained  that  they  were  not  justified,  and 
that  the  Tories  were  and  are  of  the  same  opinion. 

But  when  a  whole  colony  of  Englishmen  were  wronged 
according  to  the  statements  both  of  Palmerston  and  Salis- 
bury, the  Beaconsfield-Salisbury  administration  (/are  not 
maintain  the  rights  of  these  Englishmen  against  the  French. 
That  is  the  courage  and  the  bravery  of  British  Jingoism^ 
which  bullies  weak  China  and  little  Greece  in  support  of  a 
Sir  John  Bowring  or  a  Don  Pacitico,  but  dares  not  maintain 
an  Englishman's  rights  against  the  French  republic. 

The  question  might  easily  have  been  settled  without 
offending  France  by  making  Port  aux  Basques,  which  is 
less  than  eighty  miles  south-west  of  Bay  St.  George  and 
beyond  the  French  treaty  limits,  the  terminus  of  the  line. 

There  must,  then,  have  been  some  concealed  reason 
behind  the  pretended  one.  It  is  absolutely  certain  that 
there  were  two  influences  at  work  in  London  which  were 
directly  antagonistic  to  the  true  interest  both  of  Great 
Britain  and  Newfoundland.  One  was  that  of  the  Canadian 
party,  who  are  determined  to  boycott  every  scheme  that 
would  make  any  Newfoundland  port  a  rival  of  Halifax. 
The  other  is  the  British,  or  mercantile,  party,  who  for  two 
hundred  years  past  have  consistently  and  successfully  op- 
posed the  introduction  of  any  industry  into  the  island  that 
would  enable  the  fishermen  to  escape  from  their  present 
bondage. 

If  either  Beaconsfield  or  Salisbury  had  really  cared  for 
England's  interests,  they  must  have  foreseen  that,  even  if 
they  were  willing  to  sacrifice  Newfoundland,  the  position 
they  took  in  this  matter  must  in  the  highest  degree  be 
damaging  to  the  European  prestige  of  Great  Britain. 
When  republican  France  was  threatened  by  all  the  tyrants 
of  Europe,  the  terrible  Danton  said,  "  II  nous  faut  de 
I'audace,  et   encore    de  I'audace,  et  toujours  de  I'audace." 


mm 


"YANKEE    SWINDLERS  45 

To-day  the  Frenchman  requires  no  Danton  to  teach  him  the 
lesson ;  for  the  extraordinary  confession  of  weakness  made 
by  the  Jingo  government  of  1878  in  refusing  to  sanction  a 
Hne  that  could  have  been  built  without  touching  the  French 
shore  question  at  all  was  a  direct  encouragement  to  the 
French  to  persevere  in  that  policy  which  they  have  since  so 
successfully  pursued  in  Madagascar,  in  Siam,  in  Africa, 
and  in  Newfoundland. 

No  matter  whether  the  French  claims  in  Newfoundland 
be  right  or  wrong,  the  Beaconsfield-Salisbury  government 
have  practically  surrendered  the  matter ;  and  the  only  thing 
left  for  the  British  government  is  to  compensate  Newfound- 
land for  its  loss,  as  America  was  compensated  for  the  "  Ala- 
bama "  damages.     But  they  will  not  do  it. 

Mr.  Whiteway  had  to  find  another  means  of  helping 
the  colony.  He  was  obliged  to  choose  between  two  al- 
ternatives,—  either  to  build  no  railway  at  all  or  only  one 
which  would  avoid  the  very  districts  which,  for  the  benefit 
of  the  settler,  ought  to  be  opened  for  settlement. 

So  the  line  to  Harbor  Grace  was  built.  But  even  this 
the  wealthy  British  did  not  build.  It  was  left  to  an  Ameri- 
can syndicate.  P.  T.  McG.,  writing  of  this  line  to  the  New 
York  IVcek/y  Post  oi  Jan.  2,  1895,  says,  "The  contract  was 
given  to  an  enterprising  Yankee,  who  built  a  few  miles, 
swindled  the  shareholders,  fleeced  the  colony,  and  then 
decamped,  leaving  as  a  legacy  an  unfinished  road,  an  in- 
terminable lawsuit,  and  a  damaged  colonial  credit." 

I  happen  to  know  another  side  of  the  question  ;  and  it 
does  not  become  the  Englishmen  interested  in  that  railway 
matter  to  talk  of  "  Yankee  swindlers." 

When  Sir  Robert  Thorburn  became  Preh  or  of  New- 
foundland, he  took  the  first  step  necessary  to  make  this  line 
of  some  value  to  the  tax-payers  by  extending  it  twenty-seven 
miles  to  Placentia,  the  old  French  "  La  Plaisance."  This 
line  was  of  immense  value  to  St.  John's,  because  it  gave  the 
people  of  that  city  a  convenient   winter  harbor  which   is 


•r 


46 


LOBSTER    QUESTION 


m 


always  open,  by  which  they  have  an  easy  communication 
with  Canada  and  the  United  States ;  and  I  hope  the  time 
will  soon  come  when  we  shall  have  steamers  running  from 
Boston,  touching  at  the  French  Island  of  St.  Pierre,  and 
then  going  to  Placentia. 

What  were  the  English  diplomatists  doing  meanwhile  ? 
In  1890  they  were  arranging  a  modus  vivetidi  with  the 
French  government  about  the  lobster  fisheries.  The  Tories 
were  in  power,  and  Sir  James  Ferguson  was  the  Under- 
secretary of  State.  This  gentleman's  sentiments  towards 
the  United  States  have  been  recorded  by  the  Hon.  James  G. 
Blaine,  In  his  "Twenty  Years  of  Congress,"  Vol.  II., 
page  481,  foot-note,  he  writes:  Sir  James  Ferguson  de- 
clared in  the  House  of  Commons,  March  14,  1864,  that 
"  wholesale  peculations  and  robberies  have  been  perpetrated 
under  the  form  of  war  by  the  generals  of  the  Federal  States ; 
and  worse  horrors  than,  I  believe,  have  ever  in  the  present 
century  disgraced  European  armies  have  been  perpetrated 
under  the  eyes  of  the  P'ederal  government,  and  yet  remain 
unpunished.  These  things  are  as  notorious  as  the  proceed- 
ings of  a  government  which  seems  anxious  to  rival  one 
despotic  and  irresponsible  power  of  Europe  in  its  contempt 
for  the  public  opinion  of  mankind."  These  words  need  no 
commentary  to-day.  They  show  us  pretty  clearly  the  char- 
acter of  the  man  who  then  spoke  them,  and  will  prepare  us 
for  his  treatment  of  the  Newfoundland  question.  On  March 
20,  1890,  he  made  the  following  statement  in  the  House  of 
Commons :  — 

"The  Newfoundland  government  was  consulted  as  to 
the  terms  of  the  modus  vivendi,  which  was  modified  to  some 
extent  to  meet  their  views ;  but  it  was  necessary  to  conclude 
it  without  referring  it  to  them  in  its  final  shape." 

Five  days  later  the  Governor  of  Newfoundland  tele- 
graphed to  the  Secretary  of  State  :  — 

"  My  ministers  request  that  incorrect  statement  made  by 
Under-Secretary  of  State  for  foreign  affairs  be  immediately 


GOVERNOR    DES    VCEUX's    PROPOSITION 


47 


contradicted,  as  the  terms  of  modus  vivendi  were  not  modified 
in  accordance  with  their  vteivs.  Ministers  protested  against 
any  claims  of  French,  and  desired  time  to  be  changed  till 
January  for  reasons  given  ;  but  that  was  ignored,  and  modus 
vivendi  entered  into  without  regard  to  their  wishes.  Minis- 
ters much  embarrassed  by  incorrect  statement  made  by 
Under-Secretary  of  State." 

Of  course  the  Secretary  of  State  supported  the  statement 
of  Sir  James  Ferguson,  and  refused  to  correct  it.  But 
on  page  54  of  the  case  for  the  colony,  published  June,  1890, 
we  find  the  words  :  — 

"  Two  facts  are  placed  beyond  dispute  by  the  above- 
quoted  correspondence:  (i)  that  the  consent  of  the 
•  community '  of  Newfoundland  to  the  modus  vivendi  was 
not  Ob ;  lined  by  laying  it  before  the  legislature,  which  the 
'  Labouchere '  despatch  declared  to  be  the  proper  action  to 
be  taken  in  such  cases ;  (2)  and  that  even  the  government 
of  Newfoundland  was  not  consulted  as  to  the  adoption  of 
the  fnodus  vivendi  as  settled.'" 

The  Labouchere  despatch  alluded  to  above,  and  called 
by  the  Newfoundlanders  their  "  Magna  Charta,"  had  been 
sent  by  the  Right  Hon.  Henry  Labouchere  on  March 
26,  1857.  But  Mr.  Labouchere  was  not  a  Tory;  and 
there  is  the  whole  difference.  So  Newfoundland  still  has 
to  suffer  for  the  criminal  negligence  which  British  Tories 
have  displayed  from  17 13  until  to-day. 

There  was  one  Englishman,  and  that  the  Governor  of 
Newfoundland  itself,  who  had  a  clear  and  honorable  notion 
of  the  imperial  government's  duty  to  its  unfortunate  colony. 
Sir  G.  William  des  Vceux,  writing  from  the  government 
House,  St.  John's,  Jan.  14,  1887,  to  the  Colonial  Office 
in  London,  after  reciting  the  circumstances,  says :  "  If  this 
be  so,  as  indeed  there  are  other  reasons  for  believing,  [ 
would  respectfully  urge  that  in  fairness  the  heavy  resulting 
loss  should  not,  or,  at  all  events,  not  exclusively,  fall  upon 
this  colony,  and  that  if  in  the  national  interest  a  right  is  to 


48 


BOUNTY    AND    RAILROAD 


It.  f  • 

I  i  h 


I 

'  - 


■  i 


be  withheld  from  Newfoundland  which  naturally  belongs  to 
it,  and  the  possession  of  which  makes  to  it  all  the  difference 
between  wealth  and  penury,  there  is  involved  on  the  part  of 
the  nation  a  corresponding  obligi.  ion  to  grant  compensation 
of  a  value  equal  or  nearly  equal  to  that  of  the  right  with- 
held." 

Nothing  can  be  fairer  than  that,  and  it  is  written  by  the 
trusted  official  of  the  British  government. 

Sir  G.  William  des  Vceux  continues,  "  In  conclusion,  I 
would  respectfully  express  on  behalf  of  this  suffering 
colony  the  earnest  hope  that  the  vital  interests  of  200,000 
British  subjects  will  not  be  disregarded  out  of  deference 
to  the  susceptibilities  of  any  foreign  power,"  etc. 

The  best  interests  of  those  200,000  inhabitants  can  be 
served  without  touching  the  French  shore  at  all.  Even  if 
France  concedes  all  that  Newfoundland  demands,  the  bounty 
question  is  in  the  way  ;  and  Newfoundland  cannot  compete 
with  that. 

P>ance  gives  this  bounty  —  and  quite  rightly  - — ■  as  a  pro- 
tection to  her  sailors.  A  similar  protection  to  England's 
fishermen  would  not  be  permitted  by  the  Manchester  men. 

The  other  way  is  to  build  a  railroad  connecting  the  min- 
ing and  agricultural  districts  along  the  French  shore  with 
Port  aux  Basques.  Of  course  I  do  not  mean  such  railroads 
as  are  built  in  England.  They  have  been  taxed  to  the  ex- 
tent of  more  than  seventy  millions  of  pounds  sterling  over 
and  above  the  real  value  of  the  land  sold  to  them  by  the 
rapacious  land  monopolists.  They  have  been  taxed  to  the 
extent  of  many  millions  more  for  legal  expenses,  which,  if 
the  House  of  Commons  were  equal  to  its  duties,  could  have 
been  saved.  They  have  been  taxed  in  many  cases  to  find 
sinecure  berths  for  the  dependants  of  rich  men  ;  and  so,  in 
order  to  pay  a  fair  dividend  to  their  stockholders,  they  must 
reduce  wages  to  the  lowest  point,  and  screw  the  utmost 
penny  out  of  their  customers. 

It  is,  then,  the  American  way  which   I  recommend  as  a 


NORTHERN    AND    WESTERN    RAILROAD 


49 


model,  and  which  the  Newfoundland  government  have  tried 
to  imitate  in  their  contract  with  Mr,  Reid,  of  Montreal. 
They  could  have  made  a  far  more  advantageous  contract 
with  him  if  England  had  done  her  duty ;  but  neither  Mr. 
Reid  nor  Newfoundland  is  to  be  blamed  for  England's 
fault. 

The  contract  signed  on  May  i6,  1893,  by  Mr.  R.  G. 
Reid  binds  him  to  construct  a  line  about  five  hundred  miles 
in  length,  connecting  Placentia  Junction  and  the  chief  east- 
ern ports  of  Newfoundland  ^ith  Port  aux  Basques,  and  to 
operate  this  line  as  well  as  the  Placentia  Branch  Railway 
for  a  period  of  ten  years,  commencing  Sept.  i,  1893. 
After  that  the  line  is  to  become  the  property  of  the  New- 
foundland government,  and  A\ill  be  an  interesting  experi- 
ment in  the  State  ownership  of  railroads.  For  every  mile 
of  single  42-inch  gauge  built  by  Mr.  Reid  he  is  to 
receive  the  sum  of  Si 5.600  in  Newfoundland  government 
bonds,  bearing  interest  at  3 1  per  cent.,  and  eight  square 
miles  of  land.  The  increase  in  rental  value  of  this  land 
will  give  a  large  revenue,  even  if  the  line  should  not  pay 
its  working  expenses. 

The  land  grant  for  500  miles  of  railroad  would  amount 
to  2,500,000  acres.  If  Newfoundland  were  one  of  the 
United  States,  capital  enough  would  be  subscribed  to 
enable  Mr.  Reid  to  finish  his  contract  in  the  allotted  time ; 
but,  as  it  is  under  England,  and  must  therefore  suffer  from 
the  awful  burden  of  England's  diplomatic  incapacity,  capital 
holds  aloof  from  it. 

Where  does  liritish  money  go?  The  Tory  of  1878 
sang,— 

"  We  don't  want  to  fight ; 

But,  by  jingo,  if  we  do. 
We've  got  the  ships,  we've  got  the  men, 

W'e've  got  the  money,  too." 


It  is  interesting  to  see  how  that  money,  which  is  with- 
held from  Britain's  oldest  colony,  has  been  spent. 


so 


HOW    BRITISH    MONEY    IS    LOST 


We  will  begin  with  Mr.  Blaine's  "  Twenty  Years  of  Con- 
gress." On  page  479  he  quotes  Lord  Campbell  as  saying 
in  Parliament  on  March  23,  18C3,  "Swelling  with  omnipo- 
tence, Mr.  Lincoln  and  his  colleagues  dictate  insurrection 
to  the  slaves  of  Alabama."  (That  fatal  word,  "  Alabama  "  ! 
Will  it  ever  cease  to  trouble  the  British  conscience  ?) 
And  he  spoke  of  the  administration  as  "  ready  to  let  loose 
4,000,000  negroes  on  their  compulsory  owners,  and  to 
renew  from  sea  to  sea  the  horrors  and  crimes  of  San 
Domingo."  Mr.  Blaine  says,  further,  that  Lord  Campbell 
argued  earnestly  in  favor  of  the  British  government  joining 
the  government  of  France  in  acknowledging  Southern  inde- 
pendence. He  boasted  that  within  the  last  few  days  a 
Southern  loan  of  ;^3, 000,000  sterling  had  been  offered  in 
London,  and  of  that  ^9,000,000,  or  three  times  the  amount, 
had  been  subscribed. 

Here,  then,  we  have  a  means  of  accounting  for 
$15,000,000.  Another  $15,000,000  is  accounted  for  by 
the  money  which  America  forced  England  to  pay  for  the 
'*  Alabama "  depredations.  On  that  point  ISIr,  Laird,  the 
builder  of  the  "Alabama,"  deserves  to  be  immortalized. 
According  to  Mr.  Blaine,  on  March  27,  1863,  ^^r.  Laird 
was  loudly  cheered  in  the  House  of  Commons  when  he 
declared  that  "  the  institutions  of  the  United  States  are  of 
no  value  whatever,  and  have  reduced  the  name  of  liberty  to 
an  utter  absurdity." 

Another  large  lump  of  Jingo  money  has  gone  into  the 
Russian  loan  ;  and,  of  this  loan,  $4,000,000  is  coming  to 
Bethlehem  in  Pennsylvania.  O  shade  of  John  Roebuck, 
look  back  to  the  earth  you  have  left,  and  see  what  your 
words  have  done  for  the  armor  plate  manufacturers  of 
your  Sheffield  constituency.  While  still  among  us  in  the 
flesh,  you  said  on  April  23,  1863,  on  some  trouble: 
"  It  may  lead  to  war ;  and  I,  speaking  for  the  English  people, 
am  prepared  for  war.  1  know  that  language  will  strike  the 
heart  of  the  peace  party  in  this  country,  but  it  will   also 


Mk.    kOKBUCK. 


5» 


strike    the    heart    of     the    insolent    people    who     govern 
America." 

And  on  June  30,  1863,  you  said:  ''The  South  will  never 
come  into  the  Union;  and,  what  is  more,  I  hope  it  never 
may.  I  will  tell  you  why  I  say  so.  America  while  she  was 
united  ran  a  race  of  prosperity  unparalleled  in  the  world. 
Eighty  years  made  the  republic  such  a  power  that,  if  she 
had  continued  as  she  was  a  few  years  longer,  she  would  have 
been  the  great  bully  of  the  world. 

"  As  far  as  my  influence  goes,  I  am  determined  to  do  all  I 
can  to  prevent  the  reconstruction  of  the  Union.  ...  I  sav, 
then,  that  the  Southern  States  have  indicated  their  right  to 
recognition.  They  hold  out  to  us  advantages  such  as  the 
world  has  never  seen  before.  I  hold  that  it  will  be  of  the 
greatest  importance  that  the  reconstruction  of  the  Union 
should  not  take  place.'' 

The  United  States  have  given  England  the  war  you 
hoped  for,—  not  a  war  against  soldiers  and  sailors,  who,  un- 
like those  who  followed  Colonel  Pepperell  and  Washington 
and  Isaac  Hull  and  Grant  and  De  Grasse  to  victory,  re- 
quire the  protection  of  a  contagious  diseases  act,  but  a  war 
of  protective  tariffs. 

The  State  which  gave  its  name  to  the  pirate  ship  *«  Ala- 
bama "  now  votes  for  tariffs  to  exclude  the  iron,  steel,  and 
coal  of  England.  Sheffield  is  in  sackcloth  and  ashes  be- 
cause Pennsylvania  has  taken  away  from  her  the  Russian 
order  for  armor  plates,  and  countless  millions  of  British  dol- 
lars are  invested  in  American  factories,  giving  high  wages 
to  tariff-protected  American  workmen  instead  of  sweaters' 
wages  to  the  beer-sodden  lunatics  who  sing  to  your  honor 
the  Tory  strain, — 

"  By  jingo,  if  we  do, 
We've  got  the  ships,  we've  got  the  men, 
We've  got  the  money,  too." 

In  almost  every  case  in  which  a  British  investor  has  lost 
his  money  in  the  United  States  it  can  be  proved  that  some 


52 


HOW    BRITISH    MONEY    IS    LOST 


'4m 


i  ! 
I 


British  expert  or  financial  agent  earned  a  large  sum  by  in- 
ducing him  to  invest. 

At  any  rate,  these  immense  investments  in  American  rail- 
roads, loans,  and  lands,  have  one  great  advantage  for  the 
United  States.  They  bind  over  England  to  keep  the  peace 
toward  us.  There  is  no  more  unpatriotic,  no  more  unmoral, 
no  more  cowardly  man  than  the  British  financial  agent  and 
money-lender.  If  only  the  security  is  good,  he  will  rather 
lend  money  at  4^  per  cent,  for  the  most  devilish  than  at  4 
per  cent,  for  the  most  divine  purpose.  It  is  due  to  the  in- 
fluence of  the  money-lending  class  that  England  has  so 
completely  lost  the  grip  of  heart  and  brain  on  her  imperial 
duties. 

It  is  said  that  John  Bull  pays  a  tax  of  $700,000,000  a 
year  to  the  liquor  interest,  to  say  nothing  of  the  indirect 
damages  resulting  from  the  fact  tliat  the  liquor  interest  is 
the  chief  supporter  of  the  brothel,  the  baccarat  table,  and 
the  Tory  Democracy.  The  beerage  has  proved  of  late 
years  also  a  highway  to  the  peerage ;  and  it  has  also  served 
to  deplete  the  pockets  of  a  good  many  British  fools,  who 
were  misled  into  the  insane  delusion  that  they  could  earn 
as  much  from  the  profits  of  American  guzzling  as  from 
those  of  British  beer-drinking.  America  has  been  infested 
for  some  time  by  a  crowd  of  Englishmen,  who  came  here 
hunting  options  on  American  breweries,  which  they  sold  at 
a  high  price  to  their  English  dupes.  In  one  case  some 
breweries,  which  cost  the  owners  less  than  $2,000,000. 
were  sold  in  England  for  ;>(), 000,000,  the  Englishmen  and 
Americans  who  managed  the  transaction  making  enormous 
profits  at  the  expense  of  their  dupes. 

On  investigating  the  published  accounts  of  some  twelve 
American  brewery  companies  in  which  Englishmen  have 
been  induced  to  invest  more  than  $41,808,000,  I  find  that 
the  depreciation  in  selling  price  of  shares,  taking  the  high- 
est rates  of  November,  1894,  was  no  less  than  $21,917,280, 
or  52.42   percent,  on  the  paid-up  capital;  and,  taking  the 


1! 


WHAT    MIGHT    BRITISH    MONEY    DO? 


53 


common  stock  alone,  the  loss  exceeds  over  seventy  per 
cent,  on  the  paid-up  capital. 

I  am  glad  of  it.  The  Englishman  who,  knowing  the 
influence  of  this  infernal  traffic  on  his  own  countrymen, 
would  make  money  by  extending  its  curse  to  the  United 
States,  deserves  to  lose  his  money  quite  as  much  as  the 
Tory  investors  in  the  Confederate  Loan  deserved  their 
loss.  Now  suppose  this  $70,000,000  thus  invested  in 
"  Alabama  damages,"  Confederate  Loan,  and  American 
breweries  had  been  put  into  Newfoundland  roads  and 
railways,  what  would  have  been  the  result?  An  immense 
amount  of  traffic  which  now  must  pay  toll  to  American 
railroads  would  have  gone  over  purely  British  lines,  all 
the  way  through  British  America  to  China  and  Japan. 
All  the  mining  and  agricultural  lands  of  Newfoundland 
might  have  been  developed.  The  French  shore  question 
would  have  ceased  to  occupy  the  diplomatic  wiseacres, 
because  the  people  would  have  found  so  much  profit  in 
other  employments  as  to  care  nothing  about  French  com- 
petition in  the  cod  and  lobster  fishery.  Newfoundland 
itself  would  have  become  an  impregnable  arsenal  for  the 
British  navy,  commanding  the  entrances  to  the  St.  Law- 
rence, and,  in  case  of  war  with  the  United  States,  giving 
that  navy  the  power  of  practically  blockading  all  the 
Atlantic  coast. 

All  this  has  been  thrown  away,  because  the  British  Jingo 
supports  a  Tory  cabinet,  which,  while  making  theatrical 
demonstrations  of  imperialism,  neglects  imperial  duties  and 
betrays  imperial  interests. 

And  look  even  at  sober  free  trade  Manchester,  the  com- 
munity which  is  supposed  to  understand  the  worth  of  money 
better  than  any  other  in  the  world.  Has  it  really  gained  by 
its  Jingo  policy?  Professing  to  be  the  stronghold  of  free 
trade,  it  rejected  the  great  free-trader,  John  Bright,  when 
in  Sir  John  Bowring's  war  he  asked  for  justice  to  China. 
It  rejected  Mr.  Gladstone  when  he  sought  the  suffrages  of 


54 


SUGGESTIONS 


South-east  Lancashire  that  he  might  relieve  Ireland  from  the 
insolent  domination  of  an  alien  church. 

And  now  the  great  makers  of  cotton  machinery  are  com- 
ing from  Lancashire  to  establish  factories  in  New  Eng- 
land, and  her  spinning  and  weaving  mill  corporations  are 
losing  their  markets  and  their  profits.  Of  eighteen  such 
corporations  whose  shares  are  quoted  in  the  Economist, 
the  highest  November  prices  of  common  stock  show  a  loss 
of  $2,553,294  on  the  paid-up  capital.  Supposing  that,  in- 
stead of  supporting  the  Jingoes,  Manchester  had  sent  men 
to  Parliament  who  would  support  a  wise  and  conservative 
policy  in  the  colonies,  Newfoundland  included,  would  it  not 
have  been  better  for  her  interests,  to  say  nothing  of 
principle  ? 

The  Newfoundlanders  in  Boston,  Mass.,  held  a  public 
meeting  there  on  the  i6th  of  February,  at  which  the  Rev. 
Frederick  Woods,  their  chairman,  said :  "  If  we  could  only 
take  our  old  island,  and  lay  her  at  the  feet  of  Uncle  Sam ! 
I  wish  we  could."  And  every  suggestion  of  annexation  to 
the  United  States  was  applauded  by  the  Newfoundlanders 
present. 

The  Newfoundlanders  on  the  island  desire  annexation 
just  as  much,  but  they  dare  not  say  so,  for  they  are  starv- 
ing ;  and  those  who  venture  to  suggest  separation  from 
England  would  be  punished  by  the  withdrawal  of  charity,  if 
not  by  even  sterner  means. 

They  are  justified  in  their  desire ;  for  England  has  been 
disloyal  to  them,  and  holds  the  island  by  no  better  right 
than  that  by  which  Turkey  holds  Armenia. 

Let  that  England,  who  expects  every  man  to  do  his  duty, 
do  her  own.     Let  her,  first  of  all,  relieve  the  suffering. 

Second.  Let  her  press  on  the  completion  of  the  railroad 
at  English  expense  to  Port  aux  Basques  as  quickly  as  pos- 
sible, and  subsidize  a  mail  line  between  England  and  the 
American  Continent  by  way  of  a  Newfoundland  port,  hold- 
ing the  railroad  property  as  security  for  money  expended. 


SUGGESTIONS  55 

Third.  Let  her  modify  her  fiscal  system  so  as  to  give  a 
real//-^^  trade,  not  only  to  the  Newfoundland  fisherman,  but 
also  to  those  of  Great  Britain  and  Ireland,  so  that  the  for- 
eigner shall  not  be  able  to  deprive  British  subjects  either  of 
their  home  or  foreign  markets.  A  small  import  duty  on  all 
fish  imported  into  the  British  Isles,  except  from  Newfound- 
land, and  a  bounty  on  the  exports  equal  to  that  given  by 
France,  will  suffice. 

Fourth.  Let  her  aid  the  unfortunate  victims  of  her  Lord 
Clan-Rackrents  to  find  comfortable  farms  and  holdings  in 
those  parts  of  the  P^ench  shore  and  along  the  railroad 
which  are  suitable  for  settlement. 

If  she  does  this,  she  may  derive  some  comfort  from  at 
least  one  passage  in  her  Prayer  Book, —  "  When  the  wicked 
man  turneth  away  from  the  wickedness  that  he  has  com- 
mitted, and  doeth  that  which  is  lawful  and  right,  he  shall 
save  his  soul  alive.  " 


APPENDIX. 


NEWFOUNDLAND'S    RESOURCES. 

Providknce,  R.I.,  U.S.A.,  Feb.  i8,  1895. 

Since  I  wrote  the  foregoing  pages,  some  papers  have 
come  into  my  hands  referring  to  Major-general  Dashwood's 
attacks  upon  the  credibility  of  those  who  are  trying  to 
make  the  resources  of  Newfoundland  known  in  Great 
Britain. 

Much  depends  on  the  point  of  view  from  which  a  man 
writes ;  and  I  can  only  say  that,  if  the  distinguished  Major- 
general  is  right,  from  a  purely  British  point  of  vieiv,  in  de- 
preciating the  island  and  its  resources,  he  thereby  furnishes 
a  verv  strong  arginnent  lo/iy  Great  Britain  should,  for  a 
reasonable  coinpensation,  cede  this  island  to  the  United  States. 
I  am  perfectly  sure  that  the  majority  of  the  200,000 
inhabitants  would  not  have  the  slightest  objection  to 
exchange  the  Union  Jack  for  the  stars  and  stripes.  But  I 
do  not  think  that,  in  making  this  exchange  myself,  I 
have  abandoned  my  old  English  habits  of  thought ;  and  so 
I  would  mention  some  reasons  why,  even  if  I  were  still  a  fel- 
low-citizen (or  should  I  say  subject?)  of  Major-general 
Dashwood,  and  were  as  much  bound  as  he  is  to  place  the 
interests  of  the  British  crown  above  every  other  interest  of 
my  life,  I  should  for  that  very  reason  differ  with  him  in 
opinion,  first  of  all,  from  a  strategic  point  of  view.  We 
must  not,  because  my  distinguished  fellow-citizen.  Captain 
Mahan,  has  so  brilliantly  painted  the  sea-power  of  England, 
forget  also  her  man-poioer.  Most  certainly,  Viscount  Wolse-- 
ley  would  not  do  so;  and  I  think  Major-general  Dashwood, 
from    whose    interesting   little  book,    "  Chipplequorgan,"    I 


58 


LUMBERING    INDUSTRY 


have  learned  that  he  came  with  his  regiment  to  HaHfax 
after  the  "  Trent "  affair,  will  agree  with  me  that  it  would 
then,  in  case  of  a  war  with  the  United  States  of  America,  have 
been  very  convenient  if  Newfoundland  had  been  peopled 
by  half  a  million  hardy  farmers,  woodmen,  and  miners,  in 
addition  to  its  few  fisher-folk.  England  has  to  take  under- 
grown  and  underfed  boys  into  her  army  now ;  but,  if  the 
sturdy  Irishmen  who  have  been  driven  to  the  United  States 
by  famine  and  eviction  had  "been  provided  each  with  the 
"three  acres  and  a  cow"  of  Joseph  Chamberlain's  speeches 
in  the  valleys  of  the  Humber  or  Codroy  Rivers,  surely  the 
experience  of  Louisbourg  and  a  hundred  well-fought  battles 
since  then  may  tell  us  how  much  more  they  would  have  con- 
tributed to  Britain's  honor  and  interest  than  they  do  now 
as  American  voters.  The  south-western  part  of  Newfound- 
land reminds  one  very  much  of  old  Ireland  in  its  climate 
and  its  physical  features,  and  certainly  is  quite  as  well  fitted 
to  sustain  a  sturdy  peasantry  of  small  land-owners. 

The  best  answer  to  the  distinguished  officer's  objections 
may  be  found  in  the  official  reports  of  the  geological  survey 
of  Newfoundland,  published  by  Edward  Stanford,  Charing 
Cross,  London.  The  present  director  of  that  survey,  Mr. 
James  P.  Howley,  F.R.G.S.,  has  repUed  in  part  to  Major- 
general  Dashwood's  remarks  in  a  letter  written  a  fortnight 
ago,  from  which  I  extract  a  few  passages.  The  Major  gen- 
eral said  at  the  Royal  Geographical  Society  that  the  timber 
of  Newfoundland  is  all  scrub,  and  fit  only  for  firing.  Mr. 
Howley  writes :  "  Our  lumbering  industry  is  in  a  most  flour- 
ishing condition.  Ten  large  saw-mills  are  in  full  swing, 
besides  several  smaller  ones,  around  our  northern  and 
western  bays.  Large  shipments  of  lumber  were  made  last 
summer  to  the  English  markets.  Messrs.  Watson  &  Todd, 
of  Liverpool,  England,  purchased  3,000,000  feet  of  lumber 
in  the  island  last  summer;  and  the  market  quotations 
in  the  Liverpool  trade  journals  will  be  the  best  index  to 
the  value  of   the  lumber.     The  Exploits  Milling  Company 


COAL    DEPObTTS 


59 


at  Botwoodsville  purchased  $25,000  worth  of  stores  in 
Montreal  to  be  used  in  the  winter's  kmiber-felling  opera- 
tions. They  calculate  on  cutting  100,000  pine  logs. 
Though  the  mill  has  been  ten  years  in  operation,  the  lumber 
shows  no  signs  of  exhaustion ;  while  the  other  and  far  more 
abundant  products  of  the  Newfoundland  forests,  such  as  fir. 
spruce,  birch,  tamarack,  etc.,  have  scarcely  been  touched. 

"The  Benton  Mill,  owned  by  Messrs.  Reid,  contractors 
for  the  Northern  &  Western  Railroad,  though  scarcely  a 
year  in  existence,  has  put  out  3,000,000  feet  of  first-class 
lumber." 

As  to  the  coal  fields,  Mr.  Howley,  referring  to  his  own 
official  reports  for  1889,  1891,  and  1892,  as  published  by 
Stanford,  writes  :  —  - 

In  the  Bay  St.  George  coal  fields  '16  distinct  seams 
were  discovered,  ranging  from  a  few  inches  up  to  several 
feet  in  thickness:  the  Clearyseam  has  26  inches  good  coal; 
Juke's  seam,  4.6  feet ;  Murray  seam,  5.4  feet ;  Howley 
seam,  4.2  feet. 

In  the  Grand  Lake  carboniferous  area  15  distinct  seams 
were  discovered,  also  ranging  from  a  few  inches  to  several 
feet.  Two  seams  on  Coal  Brook  show  2.4  and  3.5  feet. 
On  Aldery  Brook,  three  seams  show  2.6  feet,  3.8  feet,  and 
14  feet  of  coal.  At  Kelvin  Brook  3  seams  contain  2.6  feet, 
3.8  feet,  and  7  feet. 

Specimens  have  been  submitted  to  experts  in  connection 
with  the  Colonial  Oflfice,  and  have  been  found,  in  some  cases, 
superior  to  the  Cape  Breton  coal.  So  much  for  the  report 
of  a  man  who  understands  his  business,  and  has  had  better 
opportunities  than  any  other  living  man  of  studying  the 
question. 

For  myself,  I  may  say  that  during  twenty  years  of  travel, 
in  which  I  have  been  from  the  Gulf  of  Mexico  to  Ottawa, 
and  from  the  Straight  Shore  of  Avalon  to  the  Muir  Glacier 
of  Alaska,  I  have  studied  every  State  which  I  have  visited 
with   a  view  to  its  attractions  for   British  emigrants,  and. 


6o 


ENGLAND  S    DUTY 


/  ; 


t 


before  the  passing  of  our  present  absurd  immigration  laws, 
have  been  instrumental  in  transferring  many  skilled  opera- 
tives from  the  foul  slums  of  Manchester  and  Salford  to  the 
healthy  and  pleasant  factory  villages  of  New  England, 

I  need  hardly  say  that  Newfoundland  is  not  the  right 
place  for  such  men ;  but,  under  a  just  and  wise  imperial 
government,  it  can  be  made  a  happy  home  for  thousands  of 
hardy  Scotch  and  Irish  peasants,  who  need  not,  in  crossing 
the  ocean,  change  their  political  allegiance.  But  England 
must  first  do  her  duty. 

She  must  build  her  railroad  from  Port  aux  Basques  along 
the  French  shore  to  Bonne  Bay,  or  further  north,  so  as  to 
give  the  people  a  means  of  communication  which  shall  not 
be  impeded  by  the  French  treaty  rights ;  and  she  must  ar- 
range her  tariffs  so  as  to  defend  her  fishermen  against  the 
unjust  discrimination  of  foreign  bounties.  As  an  American, 
I  can  have  no  interest  in  saying  these  things  to  Englishmen. 
If  Major-general  Dashwood  is  right,  so  much  the  better 
for  us. 

Our  Whitneys  are  awakening  new  life  amid  the  ruins  of 
Louisbourg,  although  the  Duke  of  York  and  those  who  fol- 
lowed him  as  proprietors  of  the  Sydney  coal  fields  could  do 
so  little  with  them ;  and  so,  if  England  cannot  help  New- 
foundland, America  can,  and  can  serve  herself  well  at  the 
same  time.  Take  the  fishing  for  an  instance.  The  French 
bounties  do  not  hurt  the  Massachusetts  fishermen,  because 
we  have  a  /tome  market  which  the  Frenchmen  cannot  touch, 
and  seek  only  a  foreign  market  for  the  very  small  quantity 
that  our  own  people  do  not  consume.  And  to  share  in  this 
American  /lome  market  alone  would  be  more  profitable  to 
Newfoundland  than    all  its    connection  with   England  can 

ever  be. 

J.  F. 


